Dr. Anne Chappelle
Appearances
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
My name is Anne Chappelle. I am a board-certified toxicologist with over 25 years of experience in the industrial chemical, pharmaceutical, consumer product industry. I've done risk assessments. I've looked at labels. I've helped people that live across the fence line. I've interpreted data for CEOs. business people down to the downstream customer handling the material.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
And so my job really is to take this wealth of information that we have out there and kind of assemble it, figure out what's right, what is good science, Make sure it's transparent and translate it for the right audience member. So I am employed by a consulting company, but I also have some side things that I like to do.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
I co-host of Adverse Reactions, which is a podcast by the Society of Toxicology. And I've also done some other things for like Wired Magazine or other podcasts. where they want somebody to help them understand what is the intent or just provide some context for what may be happening and use some of the skills that I have and my resources to help people understand what we're talking about. Perfect.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
It refers to damage to the brain, white matter, and it manifests itself as neurotoxicity. So what they've seen is that this tends to be more with females and people with liver insufficiencies. The liver issues can be typical of a drug abuser. We tend to think of the brain as being protected.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
You have a skull, and we all have this thing called a blood-brain barrier, which is something that protects our brain from being exposed to a number of different agents. So when you have certain substances, we often see that these agents that are really neurotoxic very potent, those that can cross into the brain, those have been associated with TL formation.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
The fact that jakes came on very quickly and progressed very quickly without going through the typical stages that you might see is a little bit unique. And a lot of times it's thought to be through a contaminant in the heroin.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
This is an agent that has been associated with heroin-induced, chasing the dragon-induced TL. I mean, first of all, a lot of drugs are bad anyway, and you don't know what you're getting. But we've all heard of rat poison. Rat poison has been used to cut different drugs. We also have xylazine, Trank, that enhances like sedation effects. but it can cause a lot of wounds and tissue damage when used.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
Even baking soda, starches, and sugars, those can be used, not usually having a lot of adverse effects with those. But again, anytime you change a particular route of exposure, you've got an issue. So, for example, if you are inhaling baking soda, people think, oh, well, baking soda's safe. Well... It's safe when you ingest it in certain quantities.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
It's safe when you make a cake with it or put it in the back of your fridge to absorb odors. But it isn't necessarily safe when you ingest part of it as a result of it being contaminated into your heroin. I think the point is that when you get a drug like heroin and you inhale it, you don't know what you're getting. So the fact that you are inhaling something
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
right through the lungs, into the bloodstream, going straight to the brain. It is a very, I guess, effective delivery method because you avoid the stomach breaking things down. Because when you ingest something, you ingest it, it goes into your stomach. The acid in your stomach tends to break things down.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
And then as it's absorbed, it goes through the liver, which the purpose of the liver is to detoxify drugs and get them ready to be eliminated. So by inhaling these drugs, you're able to bypass some of those other processes. And again, it's a very effective way to deliver substances, especially something that has been cut into the heroin that you're taking right to the brain.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
And if it already has a possibility to cross the blood-brain barrier, or is known to cause problems, neurotoxic-type problems, it can promote those.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
There could have been something, that he didn't realize, because he was high, that mimicked TL early. And then maybe that dose and whatever it was in it or not in it kind of just pushed him over the edge. So it is kind of impossible to be able to tell. The other thing to remember is that humans as a whole have a very diverse way of responding to odors and tastes.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
Some people are super tasters, super smellers. Some people are not. The older you get, the less you're generally able to have functioning neurons in your nose that help facilitate the detection of odors. So it really depends on a lot of factors.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
The route of exposure can be really important. Several years ago, there was a popcorn factory in Texas, and this popcorn factory made those microwave popcorn bags. And so they made all different kinds of popcorn. And one of the kinds was the theater butter type popcorn. You know, everything's going fine. The public loves this popcorn.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
But as it turns out, some of the lab workers started to get sick with lung related diseases. And what was happening is that these lab workers, they were in quality control. So they go down to the line and they'd have to pick maybe 15 or 20 bags off of the line, take them back to the lab, make microwave popcorn, open them up.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
pour them out and count how many unpopped kernels there was because there's a standard in the industry that says you know for good quality if your popcorn pops and you only get two kernels bad batch these workers when they would open the bag there would be a puff of the butter flavor and as it turns out that substance diacetyl was severely damaging their lungs
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
to the point where some of them needed lung transplants and resulting in permanent damage. So this idea that, hey, wait, diacetal is generally recognized as safe for its use as a butter flavor. Yes, if you eat it. But these lab workers were being exposed to really high levels and inhaling diacetyl right into their lungs. So why is this important in today's society?
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
Well, there's an awful lot of vaping materials that smell like bubble gum. Or maybe they smell like buttered popcorn or mint or whatever cotton candy you want it to smell like. And they say, oh, I can put these substances in there because, look, they're safe. You know, I can eat them in my cotton candy. I can put them on my popcorn.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
But when you deliver them by an alternate route, that's when you have to be really careful. There are some common substances that become lethal even in small amounts. And a good example is the substance visine. Visine is an eyedrop that you put when your eyes are really red and it causes blood vessel constriction.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
The blood vessels constrict in your eye and they don't turn, your eye doesn't seem as red. So when it's used as directed, it's fine. But what swallowing it in copious amounts can cause a very serious adverse reaction. If you get enough of it in you, it swallows enough, you can affect your central nervous system. And if you swallow too much of the substance, you can get severe drowsiness, sedation.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
So it kind of looks maybe like alcohol intoxication. It can change your breathing, lower your blood pressure, and you can result in respiratory failure. or at severe cases, blurred vision, seizures, or even coma. So, yes, there are substances that you might have in your home that you really have to be careful with and make sure that you use as directed in the route that you're supposed to.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
When we start going back to Jake's situation, here he was inhaling something that was damaging his lungs, which partially might have been damaging his blood-brain barrier, and it could have resulted in something seemingly innocuous added to his drug, which maybe taken orally or injected would have been handled differently by the body.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
But because it was inhaled, maybe that's one of the substances that kind of pushed him over the edge with TL.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
The state of California has decided that exposure to the combustion products from gas stoves is a problem for individuals and for the environment. So they are limiting the amount of gas stoves that can be used in California.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
you know, wherever Jake was working, if he was around a grill, if there were some open flames and those different combustion products, those could have potentially led to something. But if he was working in a restaurant where there's a lot of, you know, different foods and presumably sourced correctly, I wouldn't think that's quite as much of an issue.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
if you have a lot of stress that can affect the functioning of your immune system which your immune system is there to help ward off infection and to be able to protect you you know taking other illicit substances chronic sleep deprivation all those kinds of agents can subtly damage your immune system and make you more susceptible to a particular disease than maybe others so
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
If he was in a situation as a chef, working crazy hours, working a lot of nights, not being out during the day to get your healthy vitamin D, it could have depressed his immune system and made him potentially more susceptible. But in reality, trying to, you know, put your finger right on something that might have caused this for him, it's hard to tell.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
If you like mystery thrillers, you know, the Pyrrho, Angela Lansbury, Agatha Christie, there's a whole plethora of items that have been used as poisons over the years. And sometimes they will have a strange taste to them. For example, arsenic has a certain taste of like almonds sometimes. cyanide as well.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
So sometimes there may be some kind of evidence like you maybe tasted something that was a little different. So certain poisons can mimic common illnesses, making them very difficult to detect. Things like heart attacks, strokes, infections, neurological disorders, all of those kinds of things could be associated with some kind of poisoning type event, some kind of adverse reaction to that.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
For example, carbon monoxide poisoning, that tends to mimic a flu, sometimes a stroke. Overexposure to thallium can mimic neurological diseases such as MS or Guillain-Barre syndrome. cyanide, mimicking heart attacks, seizures. So I think it's about us being kind of in tune with your own body and what feels right and what doesn't feel right.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
Certain insecticides can cause nerve damage, seizures, and coma. But usually with those, they can do a blood test and see, you know, maybe that your levels of this particular enzyme are impaired. But again, it's hard to figure this out. The other thing is that, I mean, I'm addicted to procedural medical dramas. and tox screen and CMC and blood and blah, blah, blah.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
But that's for the common stuff. Like they're looking for the tox screen. They're looking for things like fentanyl and opioids and, you know, maybe some of these other agents that are commonly associated with an overdose.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
So it's not until there is a specific request or an indication and you actually have the samples to be able to say, no, I really need, you know, I need to look for X. And that's one of the reasons why whenever there is a suspicious death, it can take weeks and weeks for the tox screens to come back. Because, again, these are not necessarily common toxins that they're looking for.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
So it can be a little difficult, and you have to be persistent. Things like metals can accumulate in hair and bone. Other agents you can look at, like warfarin, which is a blood thinner that's commonly found in rat poison. So they can commonly see they can see that one pretty quickly. But some of these others, they'd really have to know what they're looking for.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
And that's that's the problem with some of these agents. You have to be a detective sometimes to really say, OK, what what is it that might have caused the presentation of certain adverse effects?
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
There would have been no reason necessarily to do it. Again, if he got this and then there were four or five other reports of overdoses or the same kind of symptoms presenting in a cluster in that particular area, there would have been no need, no reason to do that. Again, it can be very frustrating. And I think, you know, I don't know a lot about Jake, but the idea that
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
We would treat certain classes of people, a drug addict, a historically overweight person, make assumptions about their health, make assumptions about where they are in their medical journey or in their personal journey. I think that dictates a lot of care across the U.S. So it's not necessarily unexpected. Now, if you think that you were drugged or poisoned, you know, keep what you can.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
Pee in a clean glass jar. Store that in a cool, dark place. and really worked to create a timeline over several days. Again, this idea of what did you eat when and where, what were you doing at the time, everything you can remember for the last week. So this idea of, you know, advocating for yourself. And it sounds like Jake is really trying to do that and figure it out.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
Unfortunately, you know, there could have been a whole multitude of things in his case and he could have just been on the brink of having an episode and whatever he took, took him over, took him over the edge. But it does make for an interesting question. I think our culture today, we always want to know why. So either we don't repeat it or we help other people.
Blink | Jake Haendel's Story
12. Bad Batch
You know, people that are ill, you know, why me? Is it in my genes? What did I do wrong? And it sometimes just isn't that simple, as much as we want to know the answer.