FASHION
MUSE MAGAZINE
BY JULIA RANNEY
PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH REESE
THREADS OF CRIME THREADS OF CRIME THREADS OF CRIME On August 14th, 1996, Karen Wetterhahn, a Chemistry Professor at Dartmouth College, spilled a drop of mercury onto her lab glove. On June 8th, 1997, she was dead. As Wetterhahn believed that her gloves would protect her from the toxic substance’s effects, she did not remove them. Yet, the poisonous compound seeped through her glove and entered her bloodstream in a matter of seconds. Six 16
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months later, Wetterhahn could not walk, see, or talk. Despite rigorous treatment to remove the poison, she slipped into a five-month coma before her death. An autopsy indicated that her blood contained twenty-two times the amount of mercury typically found in the human body. Wetterhahn’s untimely death resulted from the glove that failed to protect her from the lethal toxin.
