Show notes
You know how in sci-fi films, there’s always some freak accident in a biotech lab, leaving hundreds of people dead and authorities in a state of pandemonium? Take the highly praised anime short film, Stink Bomb, for example. A flu-ridden lab technician swallows an abandoned pill on his boss’s desk presuming (reasonably, right?) that it could only be flu medicine. Turns out it just so happens to be part of an experimental bioweapons program, causing his body to omit vapours that are lethal to everyone around him. The enigmatic movie ends with everyone dead. It’s worth the watch actually. So, turns out that Stink Bomb was actually based on a true story. Say WHAT? Riverside General Hospital, southern California, on Feb 19, 1994. At 8 am, ambulance drivers rushed 31-year-old Gloria Ramirez into trauma room 1. She presented with shallow and rapid breathing and her heart was beating way too fast, causing her blood pressure to take a nosedive. After a cocktail of drugs and respiratory assistance, nothing was working. When the hospital staff yanked off her t-shirt to get ready to defib, they observed an oily sheen covering Ramirez’s body coupled with a fruity, garlicky odour. Hmmmm. They took some blood and that too had an interesting stench for different reasons. Not only that but upon closer inspection of the syringe, Gloria’s blood contained straw-coloured flecks. Okay, that doesn’t seem like it’s a good thing. Suddenly, the nurse who drew Gloria’s blood started feeling faint and like her face was burning. The respiratory therapist was unable to control her limbs. They started dropping like flies. The medical resident who had eyeballed the syringe started shaking in waves, having repeated apnea episodes. She actually ended up spending 2 weeks in intensive care, suffering from hepatitis, pancreatitis, and avascular necrosis, (a condition in which bone tissue is starved of blood and begins to die). Hectic. More and more staff started falling ill so the boss doctor, Humberto Ochoa, evacuated the emergency room into the parking lot. There, the fallen staff’s clothes were removed and sealed in bags in case they had been contaminated with some kind of poisonous gas. This is legit sci-fi film material. Now, while all the sick people were outside naked with burning faces and uncontrolled limbs, a skeleton crew stayed in the trauma room and worked to revive Gloria with multiple defib attempts. Sadly, she was declared dead at 8:50 and her body was isolated in another room. What the HELL was going on? Was it a gas leak? A mass hysteria event? Maybe the hospital was the site of a secret meth lab! Hey, meth was big business in Riverside County in the 90s. But these are all just theories. We need real science-based answers. Time to wheel out the computer-guided combined gas chromatograph spectrometer. (That’s an Adam West Batman episode right there). Incredibly, even after exhaustive toxicological studies and investigations by serious experts from at least two institutions, they couldn’t find anything that would have stink bombed the emergency department. So what the heck happened? Friends, it’s time to get real science nerdy. We’re talking David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson-level nerdy. Did you know just half a gram of dimethyl sulphate can kill a person in 10 minutes? Don’t ask how science knows that. Oh, and you know how sci-fi films usually have some crazy person with a whiteboard and red string trying to figure out what’s going on? Yeah, this story has that too (but in the form of a scrapbook). Previous episodes mentioned: A Million And One Uses For Sperm! The Dancing Plague of 1518! The Sexist Science Behind Animal Testing SOURCES: Discover Magazine: Analysis of a Toxic Death A possible chemical explanation for the events associated with the death of Gloria Ramirez at Riverside General Hospital Patrick M. Grant, Jeffrey S. Haas, Richard E. Whipple, Brian D. Andresen Forensic Science International 87 (1997) 219–237 IFL Science: The Death Of "The Toxic Lady" Remains An Unsolved Medical Case New York Times: Fumes at hospital baffles officials Straight Dope: What’s the story on the “toxic lady”? Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gloria_RamirezSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.