Which Scientific Element has Killed the Most Human Beings?

berglion you are correct sir! I hadn't even thought of that. We're all at LCD just hydrogen with energy levels and mass tweaked by nature. Darn I was having fun too. Hats off to berglion.

Thanx,

Victor K.

As a geological-theory "catastrophist" (believing earyth-shaking cataclysms have been more destructive than present-day "gradualist" geologists think - ever read Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision"?) my entry in this contest would be Sulfur, the key element in the toxic gases accompanying world-shaking cataclysms.

Actually, it's arsenic.

Arsenic was used as a medicine for thousands of years and was a favorite ingredient in quack medicines and nostrums during the 1600's-early 1900's.

Mercury is a close second. That was the popular remedy for syphillis (by quacks) during the 1500's to 1800's.
www.soilandhealth.org...

This didn't go over the effects of these extreme doses of mercury, which basically included your innards turning into a black and tarry goo with no definable organs in there:
www.mercurysafety.co.uk...

Nice stuff byrd,but has mercury and arsenic killed more ppl than hydrogen and carbon?
Considering they are in metals,which are used for swords/knives this would SEEM to be the fist choice,but i have to lean more toward byrd's answer.

You people better stop......do you want the government to find out about this and regulate carbon and oxygen???

Don't blow it for the rest of us.

LOL

Speaking of regulating oxygen, 7-11 now sells fresh air in Japan! link

Originally posted by spanishcaravan
Nice stuff byrd,but has mercury and arsenic killed more ppl than hydrogen and carbon?
Considering they are in metals,which are used for swords/knives this would SEEM to be the fist choice,but i have to lean more toward byrd's answer.

The original question asked for elements and not compounds.

Not many people killed themselves or others by breathing hydrogen or lighting hydrogen fires. Very few choked others with charcoal or stabbed them with diamonds.

Copper's too soft to make a good weapon without adding other metals. And there is very little pure iron in the iron weapons. Pure iron doesn't hold much of a wedge, so they used primitive steelmaking (I was surprised at how old it is) to make harder weapons.

You could also argue that silicon was, because we have several million years of human history when we threw rocks at things and hunted with flint knives and spears and arrows.

Anyway, I took it as a fun question... but arsenic and mercury are among the top contenders.

hydrogen. Its the most common, and its found in just about every single compound. Its in explosives, gun power, organic life forms, ropes for strangulation, water for drowning, poisons for poisoning, ect.

However, byrd is right if you are going by single elements in their pure and natural state, although I say iron could very well beat them, as wepaons of pure iron have been used to kill long before guns and bombs.

Originally posted by V Kaminski
Speaking of regulating oxygen, 7-11 now sells fresh air in Japan! link

Maybe there will be an increase in deaths related to above-normal oxygen levels, as the oxygen concentration in the can is 95%?
People might go puff-happy