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Iron (Fe) Ore, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald*, and the Periodic Table of Death. Actually, it was taconite iron pellets—marbled-sized balls made from Iron (Fe), the most abundant metal in Earth, making up 35% of the Earth’s core (1). To make Taconite, powdered and processed Fe ore is blended with a binder clay, rolled, and fired into a pellet form (2). Taconite pellets were loaded onto the enormous ships that once sailed in abundance across the Great Lakes to the steel mills that made up the blue-collar beating heart of the U.S. in the 1970s. One of those ships was the SS …

When your Periodic Table of DEATH image is on an actual DEATH CERTIFICATE. My aunts spoke about my great-grandfather in those low-voiced side-of-the-mouth conversations… Because he was a monster. Oh, not the serial-killer kind. But the explosive at-the-drop-of-the-hat temper kind…and his wife, Maria, apparently took the brunt of it, although his nine children probably saw the back of his hand more than once. He’d emigrated from the Campania region in Italy in the 1890s (I’ve also heard he was KICKED OUT of Italy because his strident politics), and bought a house and mill on a creek in Franklin, Massachusetts. Based on his death certificate, he worked …

Remember the movie Erin Brockovich (1)? Julia Roberts played a single mom fighting Pacific, Gas & Electric for contaminating the groundwater of Hinkley, California with hexavalent chromium, Cr(VI).  True Story. Those poor folks in Hinkley had to contend with increased levels of cancer, allergic reactions, itchy rashes, crusty skin lesions, and kidney and liver failure (2). But then why is Cr used everywhere in everyday life? And I mean everywhere (3). It’s in stainless steel flatware, the bumpers of older model cars, the shiny plating on tools like rachets, sockets, and wrenches, and leather tanning (just FYI, I’m never buying …

Helium and the Periodic Table of DEATH We’ve all done it—sucked in helium (He) from birthday party balloons to sound like Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz (1). But helium and homicide? Hey, humans are nothing if not ingenious. I’ll illustrate with a relatively recent case that befuddled the police, at least, for a little while. Let’s start with the properties of He because they are essential for our story. Helium is the second lightest and second most abundant element in the universe after Hydrogen. One of seven noble gases on the Periodic Table, it’s found as a common component …