It is fairly trivial to avoid drinking gasoline. For example, I managed it 100 per cent of the time so far, and I am 43.

It is not as trivial to avoid breathing in lead when you live around cars that use leaded gasoline.

Toxic fumes from burning unleaded gasoline are actually a big problem and your car has a lot of expensive catalytic stuff to limit them.

How many of the toxic fumes from unleaded gasoline bioaccumulate though? As far as I know, CO and NOx do not bioaccumulate. The other stuff, partially burned/unburnt hydrocarbons, I don't know about.

Sure. I totally agree. That doesn't mean it's not poison though.

Never had an old Kawasaki KLR650 with a leaking gas tank, eh? :-)

They just announced the new bike with fuel injection :D

I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that leaded gasoline is much worse.

I like a little bit in my coffee in the morning, however.

Refined oils aren't that poisonous. You could probably drink a gulp of pure octane and suffer no more than alcohol like effects and an upset stomach.

Ingestion of gasoline US CDC

"350 g (12 oz.) can result in death for a 70 kg individual. As little as 10 to 15 g (less than one-half ounce) may be fatal in children. Symptoms of intoxication by ingestion of gasoline can range from vomiting, vertigo, drowsiness and confusion to loss of consciousness, convulsions, hemorrhaging of the lungs and internal organs, and death due to circulatory failure. Ingestion can cause irritation to the gastrointestinal mucosa and can be complicated by pulmonary aspiration, resulting in chemical pneumonitis."

https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/MMG/MMGDetails.aspx?mmgid=465&toxid...

350g of gasoline (for a 70kg person) is a huge amount to accidentally ingest. That's an LD50 of 5g per kilo, which to put into perspective isn't really that toxic compared to ethanol which has an LD50 of about 7g per kilo.

Highly refined gasoline that you can buy in pharmacies as mineral oil is safe to put on babies skin. It's not toxic in the order of magnitude that Tetraethyl-lead is.

Lol no you will throw up everything in your stomach violently until it is completely empty and go to ER mostly likely. Then the doctor will have you stick around for a few hours and make sure you are okay and let you sleep off the headache. Ask me how I know (I was stupid and 10 and trying to siphon gas for my mini motorcycle for the first time, DM for me more for more details).

How many years ago was this? I ask because "gasoline" isn't really a thing in chemistry. It's a mixture that will run cars. You could have drank a cup of just about anything.

A cup of octane wouldn't be the worse thing you could swallow. Given a choice, I'll drink a cup of octane before a teaspoon of TEL (OP appears to favor cooking units)

Dude it was gasoline out of a truck, I was 10, not 1. Obviously gas is regulated here as to what goes in it with a little bit of variation. That said I'm not a chemist. The USA is backwards compared to Europe but not that backwards.

It sounds like you had a very upset stomach and a bad hangover.

extreme nausea and I suspect dehydration caused the headache because there was nothing left in me I threw for what seemed like a half hour. However it was a long time ago. I was actually fine the next day.

You're probably thinking of mineral oil, which is indeed used as a laxative. But it's much less volatile since it consists of much higher alkanes than the C8, octane, in gasoline.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_paraffin_(drug)