Have to agree with tbg that it would be very nice to go back to discussing cables but I hope everyone understands that I really have to respond to some recent posts. And I ask the forum's forgiveness in the matter, but I feel I have little choice, and have to deal with a toxic cloud that seems to be hanging over my head.
That being said, I was somewhat surprised and quite disturbed by the response that Sabai posted. I had, mistakenly it seems, thought that I had produced a fairly good argument to buttress our contention that TEO Audio products are safe. But looking at the Sabai posts, which looked, at first blush, to be very well thought out and comprehensive, I realized that we were still not out of the woods.
And rather than engage Sabai in a point by point rebuttal I will, for sake of brevity, try to keep this short, and concentrate on only two points. (the other points I believe have been adequately covered in my earlier post).
The first thing I find odd about Sabai's response is that he continues to pivot his argument on a very strange source, a company that sells water treatment solutions. In doing so, he categorically rejects the medical community, whose research, articles, testing and certification processes confirm the safety of both Galinstan and Geratherm's use of it.
The fact that Lenntech appears to rely on this self-same database to define the focus and scope of their work -seems lost on him (to my knowledge Lenntech has done no independent research in the matter). But, what they have done is creatively craft a storyline that bears every appearance of simply playing into their business plan.
If I were a cynical man I would opine that Sabai has chosen that line and stuck with it, and against all evidence to the contrary, I may add, because more than anything, it says what he wants to hear.
The second point I would like to address is the line drawn from the NCBI study. In and of itself, this line stands as quite a damning statement that puts my claims in a rather bad light (and would likely give pause to anyone who dared deal in any way with indium in its myriad forms). As one can imagine, I found this especially disturbing. But instead of turning tail and running away I decided to run straight into the oncoming fire and seek out that study.
In fairly short order, I found the article (actually it was only the abstract to the article but it did contain the line that Sabai had used to support his contentions, so I was confident I found the self-same study). In my reading of the abstract I found something that was not only very disturbing, but also quite disappointing, though at the same time -most interesting. That very disturbing and quite disappointing part is quite easy to see for anyone who wishes to look at the abstract of the study (the link is here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18931462 ). It is the part of the abstract that outlines the studies' outcome, which incidently, stands in stark contrast to what Sabai is trying to insinuate with the line he pulled from this abstract. It plainly states that there were no adverse responses to the application of rather large doses of indium to the test subjects.( I invite to look at the abstract for full details )
As an aside, I would have liked to have provided access to the full article.....which was kindly provided to me by my partner who has access to PubMed...this is one of the many perks of living with someone who does medical research for a living....but there are difficulties providing that link to the general public. But after reading the full article several times, I can say with certainty that the article accurately reflects the findings of the study.
But just so no one misses the point I will elaborate again. What you find in the abstract is the line that Sabai presented as damning proof of potential problems caused by indium toxicity. Now I have no problems with the presentation of that statement. But it is what immediately follows that statement was the stuff that I found so problematic.
The text of the abstract in its entirety is below....including the part that Sabai managed to mysteriously miss, or maybe, just maybe, intentionally ignored . To put this into perspective, if this kind of thing were to occur in an academic or research setting, termination would soon follow.
Abstract
Indium is widely used in the electronics industry to make semiconductors, liquid-crystal panels, and plasma display panels, and its production is increasing. However, it is necessary to handle it more cautiously than before, because the pulmonary toxicity of inhaled indium has been identified. The present study aimed to characterize the potential toxic effects of indium through oral administration and observation for fourteen days following a single dose of 0 or 2,000 mg/kg (acute oral toxicity study), and repeated oral administration for 28 days at dose levels of 0, 40, 200, or 1,000 mg/kg daily (28-day repeated oral dose toxicity study) to male and female Crj:CD (SD) IGS rats (SPF). No deaths and no abnormalities in clinical signs, body weights, and necropsy findings were observed for any of the animals in the acute oral toxicity study. Furthermore, no changes related to indium were also observed in the dose groups up to 1,000 mg/kg of the 28-day repeated oral dose toxicity study. From the results described above, the lethal dose 50% (LD(50)) of indium is greater than 2,000 mg/kg under these study conditions, and the no-observed-adverse-effect-level (NOAEL) is considered to be 1,000 mg/kg for males and females under these conditions.
Now, if I may translate the studies' findings into terms more appropriate to the discussion we are having in this thread, to wit, to reach the NOAEL ( the no-obseved-adverse-effect-level) one would have to ingest in their entirety, the contents of approximately 1232 TEO Audio Liquid Cables over the course of 28 days. And to reach the LD(50) (lethal dose 50% ) levels someone would have to ingest the entire contents of approximately 2464 TEO Audio Liquid Cables in the course of 28 days. ( This is assumimg that the indium in the eutectic alloy we use can be wholly separated out, which is most definitely impossible to do )
To put this into perspective: to achieve the same base level of relative toxicity one would have to ingest 1250mg/day of either Vit A or Vit D ( and according to the study we are discussing the amount of indium that has to be ingested to achieve the same level of toxicity in an average male is approximately 160,000 mg/day).
So where does leave us? Well it seems the study that Sabai introduced into this discussion has unequivocally shown that indium is indeed a safe material to use in the way we use it and the way a client would generally use it. And that, I consider good news. Thank you Sabai.
The bad news is that Sabai has shown himself to be either well intentioned, but incompetent or someone with a rather toxic agenda. In this regard his recent postings have proved to be way less than flattering to both himself and the members of this forum, who at the very least deserve some semblance of honesty in postings.
Before I leave I will give you a small footnote. This indium study was a response to the death of a worker in a plant that produced the transparent conductive films used in flat panel displays ( such as TV's and computer monitors ) In his job this worker inhaled, continuously, for three years, a compound that contained indium, though it should be noted, in a form radically different from either the Galinstan that Sabai rails against, or the alloy we use in our cable.
So, I guess the irony is that Sabai has more to fear from the computer that he typed his rants on than he ever would have from our products.
Again, thank you for your time. I sincerely hope this is the last that I will have to post on this topic
