DNP is no joke. In the old days, people died because DNP was often contaminated (it was used in the mining industry, and manufactured un-hygienically. Imagine something scooped out of a barrel of mining chemicals!), and people probably didn't measure it as precisely as we can now.
In recent times, it's important to separate fact from urban myth. I swear, I've had no less that two DOZEN (not exaggerated) people gripe at me about DNP issues by claiming they "know a guy" or "had a friend" who died on the stuff. I call bullshit on that. If it were true, it'd be all over the news and the forums; this would be a HUGE medical scandal. To me, "I know a guy who died/almost died on DNP" is the equivalent of "My Great-Grandmother was a Cherokee princess" of cliché claims.
There have been one or two verifiable deaths, and both were in the early-mid 90s. In both cases, the men had combined DNP with street drugs and alcohol (one of them had boasted of this on the Elite forums, in a now-infamous incident). His source was apprehended and served a brief amount of time--not for the death (which everyone, even the authorities, recognized as the victim's own doing), but for marketing a non-approved "dietary supplement." At the heart of it, this is a situation involving people not following rules of common sense and then DELIBERATELY compounding their risks. On its own, the fatal dose of DNP is somewhere around 3 grams per average male. Most men using DNP use 2-3 caps/day, which ranges from less than half a gram to slightly more than half a gram. To take a fatal dose of DNP (without using any other substances to increase the chances of death), one would have to take about 10-15 caps' worth (depending on the dose of the capsules, which are typically 200-250mg). Who does that?
One other issue to watch for are the DNP scare-mongers, who like to say stuff like "You're stupid if you use that shit! They make bug spray/dynamite/the One Ring of Sauron out of that stuff!"
It's technically true that DNP did indeed used to be an ingredient in some pesticides--back in the old days. DNP, although flammable in dry, raw form, is not an ingredient of dynamite, so that's just wrong (Wikipedia is your friend!). But this makes a basic logical mistake: if substance A is used in substance B, and substance B is bad, does that proves that substance A is just as bad, too? Of course not! You never hear people use the same ignorant scare-tactics about injectible AAS: "Bro, that shit contains alcohol! They use alcohol to preserve dead fetal pigs in jars! You're stupid for using a dead fetal pig preservative!"
Or drinking a Mountain Dew: "Bro, that shit contains water! They use water in toilets! You're stupid for using something that flushes turds!"
So the lesson is that what they use something in is NOT insight into the properties of a single separated component of the thing, too.
Funny thing is that when I've occasionally posted the dozens of studies from pubmed (which are verifiable peer-reviewed publications) that show that DNP also fights cancers, shrinks tumors, preserves DNA and RNA, attacks infections, and weakens bacteria that are antibiotic resistant, some people scoff and go right back to that "DNP is dynamite and comes from Satan's anus and I know a guy who grew two heads on the stuff" nonsense.
And I'll admit it: in the past, I too unintentionally repeated misinformation about DNP myself, totally innocently, and was called out for it. I accepted the new information, apologized for repeating something that had been incorrect, and changed my thoughts--which, I believe, is what we're SUPPOSED to do when we make a mistake, right?
So congratulations and much respect to people on PM, who are known for serious inquiry! It's nice to see a discussion that doesn't just devolve back into the typical bodybuilding.com mythology.
In recent times, it's important to separate fact from urban myth. I swear, I've had no less that two DOZEN (not exaggerated) people gripe at me about DNP issues by claiming they "know a guy" or "had a friend" who died on the stuff. I call bullshit on that. If it were true, it'd be all over the news and the forums; this would be a HUGE medical scandal. To me, "I know a guy who died/almost died on DNP" is the equivalent of "My Great-Grandmother was a Cherokee princess" of cliché claims.
There have been one or two verifiable deaths, and both were in the early-mid 90s. In both cases, the men had combined DNP with street drugs and alcohol (one of them had boasted of this on the Elite forums, in a now-infamous incident). His source was apprehended and served a brief amount of time--not for the death (which everyone, even the authorities, recognized as the victim's own doing), but for marketing a non-approved "dietary supplement." At the heart of it, this is a situation involving people not following rules of common sense and then DELIBERATELY compounding their risks. On its own, the fatal dose of DNP is somewhere around 3 grams per average male. Most men using DNP use 2-3 caps/day, which ranges from less than half a gram to slightly more than half a gram. To take a fatal dose of DNP (without using any other substances to increase the chances of death), one would have to take about 10-15 caps' worth (depending on the dose of the capsules, which are typically 200-250mg). Who does that?
One other issue to watch for are the DNP scare-mongers, who like to say stuff like "You're stupid if you use that shit! They make bug spray/dynamite/the One Ring of Sauron out of that stuff!"
It's technically true that DNP did indeed used to be an ingredient in some pesticides--back in the old days. DNP, although flammable in dry, raw form, is not an ingredient of dynamite, so that's just wrong (Wikipedia is your friend!). But this makes a basic logical mistake: if substance A is used in substance B, and substance B is bad, does that proves that substance A is just as bad, too? Of course not! You never hear people use the same ignorant scare-tactics about injectible AAS: "Bro, that shit contains alcohol! They use alcohol to preserve dead fetal pigs in jars! You're stupid for using a dead fetal pig preservative!"
Or drinking a Mountain Dew: "Bro, that shit contains water! They use water in toilets! You're stupid for using something that flushes turds!"
So the lesson is that what they use something in is NOT insight into the properties of a single separated component of the thing, too.
Funny thing is that when I've occasionally posted the dozens of studies from pubmed (which are verifiable peer-reviewed publications) that show that DNP also fights cancers, shrinks tumors, preserves DNA and RNA, attacks infections, and weakens bacteria that are antibiotic resistant, some people scoff and go right back to that "DNP is dynamite and comes from Satan's anus and I know a guy who grew two heads on the stuff" nonsense.
And I'll admit it: in the past, I too unintentionally repeated misinformation about DNP myself, totally innocently, and was called out for it. I accepted the new information, apologized for repeating something that had been incorrect, and changed my thoughts--which, I believe, is what we're SUPPOSED to do when we make a mistake, right?
So congratulations and much respect to people on PM, who are known for serious inquiry! It's nice to see a discussion that doesn't just devolve back into the typical bodybuilding.com mythology.
