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I'm currently working an unusual case of poisoning, with Sodium Dichloro-S-Triazinetrione.

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In my case, I need to know the expected reaction with carbonic acid.

I'm also curious if anyone could give me an opinion as to the suspected, expected chemistry of an air dried sample, after a partial reaction of this material has occurred. In other words, a hard pellet of dichlor was almost completely dissolved in carbonic acid, and then fished out of the patients cup.

My C13 NMR analysis has yielded the following signal, using D2O as a solvent. Here's the NMR scan of the material after it reacted with carbonic acid and was air dried:

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I'm no longer in a chemical field of work, but I do have a background in chemistry. However, I'm working on an unusual poisoning case. As far as I can tell, this is also an index case, with no other examples in the medical literature. The patient* essentially made a drink, by accident, with carbonic acid and dichlor, yielding active chlorine, but the air dried the remaining "pellet" of the poison material which is the mystery. That post reaction, partially reacted material is what was sent through the NMR.

*The patient in this case lost his voice for about 3 months, and then suffered a permanent change in his digestive system.

Reference

  1. The Effect of Cyanuric Acid and Other Interferences on Carbonate Alkalinity Measurement by John A. Wojtowicz, JSPSI, 1, 1, 2001(link)
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  • $\begingroup$ Carbonic acid (pKa 6.35) (2012books.lardbucket.org/books/…) is not strong enough to protonate sodium dichlorocyanuric acid pKa 3.75 (pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/…) so you are dealing with the properties of the sodium salt. $\endgroup$
    – Waylander
    Commented Dec 11, 2021 at 8:00
  • $\begingroup$ 1. I have made some edits, removed some extra, chatty words and made the question fit for this site. Hope you don't mind. If you want, you can revert back the edit. 2. It is very difficult to obtain pure carbonic acid as it quickly decompose to carbon dioxide and water. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid $\endgroup$
    – Nilay Ghosh
    Commented Dec 11, 2021 at 9:49
  • $\begingroup$ No problem ... It's basically just carbonated mineral water with a little flavoring, a tiny amount of ethanol, no sugar or sweetener. Link to reagent solution - instacart.com/products/… $\endgroup$
    – Excallibro
    Commented Dec 11, 2021 at 10:27
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know if such symptoms can be provoked by the ingestion of a cup of tea amount of unknown concentration, but why hypochlorite and/or Cl2 poisoning/burning of the tissues has been ruled out? $\endgroup$
    – Alchimista
    Commented Dec 11, 2021 at 11:59
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    $\begingroup$ I agree with alchemista that the toxic agent is likely HOCl. One consequence of the carbonic acid would be maintain a high HOCl/ClO- ratio which means much more potent oxidizing activity $\endgroup$
    – Andrew
    Commented Dec 11, 2021 at 12:16

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The most likely scenario here seems to be a minor variant of bleach poisoning. Dichlor is primarily used as a UV-stable slow-release source of HOCl for swimming pool disinfecting. When dissolved in water, it is slowly hydrolyzed to HOCl and cyanuric acid.

In this scenario, the dry pellet recovered from the drink would be a mix of unreacted or singly dechlorinated dichlor along with the product cyanuric acid. No information is provided about the time that the dichlor was in water, but given that cyanuric acid has a single 13C NMR peak at ~150 ppm (see https://spectrabase.com/spectrum/7YT6cO2Flau), it appears that the bulk of the material is still at least singly chlorinated. Nonetheless, it would only take a small amount of HOCl to cause significant damage. Household bleach is typically only about 5-10% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) and is toxic even after further dilution.

In the dichlor/carbonic acid mix, the carbonic acid would further act to keep the hypochlorous acid in the protonated form ($\ce{HOCl}$) rather than the much less reactive hypochlorite ($\ce{ClO-}$) that dominates in household bleach.

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