What are the hazards of phenol to human body

Many people may not be familiar with phenol, but this substance is very harmful to our body, especially phenol among phenols. If there are coking, gas or oil refining enterprises near your residence, the wastewater they discharge will contain this substance. We must be aware of the harm of phenol to the human body, and take effective measures to resolve similar poisoning situations in a timely manner. So, what are the hazards of phenol to the human body?

Among phenolic compounds, phenol is the most toxic. Phenol is the main component in wastewater discharged from industries such as coking, gas production, and oil refining.

Phenolic compounds are a kind of cytoplasmic poison. Their toxic effect is to react chemically with proteins in the cytoplasm to form denatured proteins, which make the cells lose their activity. The pathological changes caused by them mainly depend on the concentration of the poison. Low concentrations can cause cell denaturation, and high concentrations can cause protein coagulation. Although low concentrations do not cause as serious local damage as high concentrations, low concentrations can penetrate into deep tissues due to their strong permeability, so the consequences are more serious. Phenolic compounds invade nerve centers and stimulate the spinal cord, leading to systemic poisoning symptoms.

Phenolic compounds can enter the body through various routes, including contact with the skin and mucous membranes, inhalation through the respiratory tract, and entry into the digestive tract through the mouth. Acute phenol poisoning mostly occurs in production accidents and can cause coma and death. When the skin comes into contact with phenol solution, it can cause severe burns, with the local area becoming grayish white, wrinkled, and softened, and then turning red, brownish red, and even black. Due to its strong penetrating power, it can cause large areas of local tissue necrosis.

After being absorbed by the human body, water contaminated by phenol in the environment can lose most of its toxicity through the body's detoxification function and be excreted from the body with urine. If the amount entering the human body exceeds the normal detoxification function of the human body, the excess can accumulate in various organs and tissues in the body, causing chronic poisoning, and resulting in varying degrees of dizziness, headache, rash, skin itching, mental restlessness, anemia, various nervous system symptoms, and chronic digestive tract symptoms such as loss of appetite, difficulty swallowing, drooling, vomiting and diarrhea. This type of chronic poisoning generally does not leave any sequelae with proper treatment. Phenolic compounds pollute surface water. If surface water is used as a source of drinking water, phenolic compounds react with residual chlorine in the water to produce disgusting chlorophenol-smelling substances, giving tap water a special chlorophenol odor with an olfactory threshold of 0.01 mg/L. In water without free chlorine, the maximum allowable concentration of phenol is 1 mg/L. The maximum allowable concentration of volatile phenols in my country's surface water is 0.1 mg/L (Class V water). my country's drinking water quality standards stipulate that volatile phenols should not exceed 0.002 mg/L.

It is very important to understand the harm of phenol to the human body. After all, the pollution situation in China is quite serious now. There are many companies that can emit phenol. If you are not careful, you will be harmed by this thing. Once a similar situation occurs, we will be able to know the specific cause and be more targeted when solving it.