Scientists discover that chemical element bromine is essential to human life
Twenty-seven chemical elements are considered to be essential for human life. Now there is a 28th – bromine.
Jun 5, 2014
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Twenty-seven chemical elements are considered to be essential for human life. Now there is a 28th – bromine.
Jun 5, 2014
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An enzyme that has been identified as instrumental in the progression of many types of cancer is meeting its match in inhibitors synthesized and evaluated by University of Colorado (CU) Cancer Center researchers.
Apr 7, 2022
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A new study involving Simon Fraser University researchers has found that prenatal exposure to flame retardants can be significantly linked to lower IQs and greater hyperactivity in five-year old children. The findings are ...
May 28, 2014
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Chemicals called polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have been used for decades to reduce fires in everyday products such as baby strollers, carpeting and electronics. A new study to be presented on Monday, May 6, at the ...
May 6, 2013
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Exposure during pregnancy to a combination of fire retardant chemicals and phthalate chemicals—both present in the average home—can contribute to autistic-like behaviors in the offspring, according to an animal study ...
Mar 5, 2015
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(HealthDay)—A controversial ingredient will be removed from many of Coca-Cola's citrus-flavored drinks, the company says.
May 7, 2014
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Biomonitoring for polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) has long traditions and was continued with the global monitoring plan (GMP) under the Stockholm Convention ...
Oct 25, 2022
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Organophosphate esters, commonly used as substitutes for brominated flame retardants, are increasingly present in various environmental media due to their use in consumer products. Humans are exposed to these chemicals through ...
Jan 18, 2024
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Australians have more traces of flame retardants in their bloodstream than Europeans and Asians but fewer than in North Americans, according to a study by local and international researchers.
Aug 4, 2014
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Bromine ( /ˈbroʊmiːn/ broh-meen or /ˈbroʊmɨn/ broh-min; from Greek: βρῶμος, brómos, meaning "stench (of he-goats)") is a chemical element with the symbol Br, an atomic number of 35, and an atomic mass of 79.904. It is in the halogen element group. The element was isolated independently by two chemists, Carl Jacob Löwig and Antoine Jerome Balard, in 1825–1826. Elemental bromine is a fuming red-brown liquid at room temperature, corrosive and toxic, with properties between those of chlorine and iodine. Free bromine does not occur in nature, but occurs as colorless soluble crystalline mineral halide salts, analogous to table salt.
Bromine is rarer than about three-quarters of elements in the Earth's crust, however the high solubility of bromide ion has caused its accumulation in the oceans, and commercially the element is easily extracted from brine pools, mostly in the United States, Israel and China. About 556,000 tonnes were produced in 2007, an amount similar to the far more abundant element magnesium.
At high temperatures, organobromine compounds are easily converted to free bromine atoms, a process which acts to terminate free radical chemical chain reactions. This makes such compounds useful fire retardants and this is bromine's primary industrial use, consuming more than half of world production of the element. The same property allows volatile organobromine compounds, under the action of sunlight, to form free bromine atoms in the atmosphere which are highly effective in ozone depletion. This unwanted side-effect has caused many common volatile brominated organics like methyl bromide, a pesticide that was formerly a large industrial bromine consumer, to be abandoned. Remaining uses of bromine compounds are in well-drilling fluids, as an intermediate in manufacture of organic chemicals, and in film photography.
Bromine has no essential function in mammals, though it is preferentially used over chloride by one antiparasitic enzyme in the human immune system. Organobromides are needed and produced enzymatically from bromide by some lower life forms in the sea, particularly algae, and the ash of seaweed was one source of bromine's discovery. As a pharmaceutical, simple bromide ion, Br–, has inhibitory effects on the central nervous system, and bromide salts were once a major medical sedative, before being replaced by shorter-acting drugs. They retain niche uses as antiepileptics.
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