'The Devil's element': the dark side of phosphorus

I would like to tell you about nsi-189 phosphate powder, my favourite element in the periodic table. Phosphorus is an excellent candidate for a poison blog as there are a surprising number of ways it can kill you. It is also the most appropriate element for a Hallowe’en blog as it is easily the spookiest member of the periodic table and associated with stories of alchemists, glowing skulls, graveyard ghosts and spontaneous human combustion.

Phosphorus is an essential part of life. When combined with oxygen to make phosphates, it holds our DNA together, makes our bones strong and carries out fundamental chemical reactions within our cells. But phosphorus also has its dark side. Some have described it as “the Devil’s element”.

Pure phosphorus comes in a variety of different forms, differentiated by colours produced by the different ways the atoms can be arranged. There is white phosphorus (also described as yellow), red, violet, black – and most recently pink has been added to the list. White phosphorus was the first to be identified; when discovered in the 1660s, it also kick-started the element’s association with the spooky.

The discovery was made by the alchemist Hennig Brandt who was boiling his own urine in search of gold (I kid you not). After days of heating up litres of stagnant pee, Hennig managed to isolate a white, waxy solid, which was probably something of a disappointment after his long and olfactorily-challenging work. But his mood must have perked up when it got dark and he observed that this newly-created substance glowed with an eerie green light.
Hennig named the new substance phosphorus, after the Greek for “light bearer”. At a time when light was usually produced by burning something, Hennig’s discovery was source of great curiosity, and it was hoped that phosphorus might offer a safer alternative to candles for lighting the home. There are two problems with this. Firstly, phosphorus compounds stink like you wouldn’t believe (trust me on this one) and no one would want the stuff in their home when it can degrade over time to produce some truly fetid odours.

The second problem is the flammability of white phosphorus. The cool, greenish glow of phosphorus is caused by its reaction with oxygen, but it doesn’t take much for this reaction to accelerate and develop into a fire, as the 17th century chemist Nicolas Lemery found out: “After some experiments made one day at my house upon the phosphorus, a little piece of it being left negligently upon the table in my chamber, the maid making the bed took it up in the bedclothes she had put on the table, not seeing the little piece. The person who lay afterwards in the bed, waking at night and feeling more than ordinary heat, perceived that the coverlet was on fire.” Lemery’s guest was lucky to survive: phosphorus burns with an incredible intensity and produces thick, choking white smoke (it is for this reason that white phosphorus has been used in incendiary bombs and to produce smoke screens).