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Elementary Students in Canada Discover EpiPens Are Useless in Space
Using a NASA program that partners with university researchers, a group of elementary students were invited to test an idea of their own. Not even NASA knew that EpiPens become useless in space. I love stories like this.
(Via the excellent Legal Nomads newsletter)
Students from St. Brother André Elementary School’s Program for Gifted Learners (PGL) were interested in the effects of cosmic radiation on the molecular structure of epinephrine, a medication found in EpiPens used in emergencies to treat severe allergic reactions. The PGL students had their experiment accepted by the Cubes in Space program, meaning that it was sent into space with NASA. The John Holmes Mass Spectrometry Core Facility in the uOttawa’s Faculty of Science analyzed the returned samples to find the epinephrine sent into space returned only 87% pure, with the remaining 13% transformed into extremely poisonous benzoic acid derivatives, making the EpiPen unusable.
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