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Published on: October 16, 2014
Traumatic osmium tetroxide inoculation
J J Ligon1, J L Abraham, A S Boyd
1Department of Medicine (Dermatology), Vanderbilt University, and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
Abstract:
Osmium tetroxide is a highly oxidizing, corrosive compound commonly found in electron microscopy laboratories. Although osmium tetroxide is known to cause rapid damage to organic tissue, its cutaneous effects have not been well studied. We report a case of traumatic inoculation from a broken vial of 4% osmium tetroxide. Electron microscopy and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy confirmed the presence of osmium in the tissue specimen. The lesion was treated by simple excision.

