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How do I verbally say 2.1 ng/kg (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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I know the ng means nanogram

But I’m curious how would I say the above line of 2.1 ng/kg

For context I got it from this paragraph

a lethal dose of 1.3–2.1 ng/kg in humans

Would it be

2.1 nanogram per kilogram?

Also if I wanted to write that as a decimal number how would i write that?

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[–] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Yeah - the dose is the poison (if you drink enough water it becomes toxic), so if you are talking precisely you need to describe the concentration of a substance in which it is likely lethal to a person, and that's typically expressed as mass of a substance per mass of bodyweight. A lot of the time you will also see this expressed as an "LD50" value; the dose at which you'd expect 50% of people to die. This accounts for the fact that people's metabolisms vary quite widely.

~1ng/kg ~= 0.08ug for a typical (~80kg) person, which is a very tiny amount - whatever you are talking about is incredibly toxic.

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