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Short Stuff: The Toxic Death of Gloria Ramirez · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: there's Dave. Let's get to it. No need for further explanation,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: let's just start. Let's go today February, thirty one year
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: old woman brought into a hospital in Riverside, California named
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Gloria Ramirez. I like where this is going so far, Chuck,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: it's succinct, it's to the point. It was for for
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: sixty seconds. She had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. But
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: that's not why she was there. She was brought to
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: the hospital because her heart was super beating. It was
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: beating out of her chest such that the chambers were
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: not filling with blood. That was lowering the volume that
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: her heart was pumping to the rest of her body,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and her blood pressure was plummeting, and it was very
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: dangerous and very strange for a thirty one year old woman, right, Um,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: But like you said, she had cervical cancer. So they
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: were like, okay, well, let's just figure this out and
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: we'll treat her and we'll just life saving measures and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: do what we can for And so the e er
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: staff started working on her like they would any other patient. Um,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: but they were unsuccessful in bringing her back. In less
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: than an hour, she was pronounced dead by the head
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: of the e R. But it's what took place during
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: that hour that has created a lasting mystery since February
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: that remains unsolved to this day because by the time
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the head of the e R pronounced Gloria Ramire is dead,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the entire emergency room, all of the patients, and almost
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: all of the staff had moved out to the parking
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: lot had evacuated the emergency room because they wanted to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: get as far away from Gloria Ramires as absolutely possible. Right, So, uh,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the first thing that happened was they noted that they
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: drew some blood, and they noticed that the blood smelled
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: like ammonia, which is not what blood smells like. They
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: started looking closer and they found these crystals had solidified
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: within the syringe in the blood. Um. They were called
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Manilla crystals. I looked for twenty minutes on what manilla
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: crystals are and couldn't find it. Well, no, they were
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Manila colored crystals. Okay, well that makes sense then, yeah, uh,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: she the Mr. Ramirez was she herself was emitting an
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: odor on her breath. It was they described it as
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: garlicky and fruity, and then her her body was seemingly
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: covered in an oily sheen. So so far that's not
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: too bad or whatever. But the first big problem that
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: they had, aside from those flex and her her blood
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: the syringe full of blood, was that the nurse who
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: had drawn the blood fainted in the er, which is
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: pretty unusual. But even more unusual is that the nurse
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: that she handed the syringe too, also fainted, staggered out
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: of the room, sat down at a nurse's station desk,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and just slumped over dead away. Also super weird. But
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: it got even weirder. A third nurse and then ultimately
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a fourth nurse all fainted um passed out. One of
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: them started wretching from nausea, all seemingly because of Gloria Ramira.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Something was happening with Gloria Ramirez in her body that
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: was making the e Er staff sick. And this was
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: highly unusual, and that's about when they evacuated the e
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: Er to get everybody as far away from Gloria ramiras
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: as possible. Yeah, in the end, twenty three of the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: thirty seven people on staff in the e R had
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: at least one odd symptom arranging from tremors to apnea. Uh.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: One of them even was an intensive care for two weeks. Pancreatitis,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: hepatitis like weird things is like an X Files episode. Basically, Yeah,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: that one nurse had all all all of those were
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: in one nurse. Hepatitis, pancreatites, and something called a vascular necrosis,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: which is where the bone becomes starved of oxygen and
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: starts to die. And this was concentrated on her knees.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: This is not supposed to happen when you're just you know,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: administering routine life saving measures to somebody who's having atrial fibrillation. Right,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: So what they did was they said, let's um seal
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the body in a bag. Let's seal that body bag
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: and an aluminum box, and let's then seal that in
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: a room until hazmat can get here. Has Matt arrived
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: that night, and they said, you know, when we go
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: to check this out, we assume we're going to find
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: some kind of toxic gas because everyone's getting sick here.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: And it got even weirder when they discovered that Gloria
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Ramirez was not emitting any kind of toxic gas. Yeah,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: they expected to find something like um seward gas, maybe
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: something coming from the e er and not necessarily Gloria
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Ramirez or phosgene gas, which can produce all sorts of
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: horrible symptoms as well. And they found nothing, not just
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: on her body, nothing in the bag, nothing in the
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: box that they sealed her in, nothing in the room.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: There was just nothing. And yet she had made twenty
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: three of the thirty seven emergency room staff sick, so
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: something had happened. But now they're like, Okay, we've got
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: a modern medical mystery on our hands. Should we take
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: a break. I think we should. All right, We'll be
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: right back, all right. So the has Matt team checks
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: out Gloria Ramirez. Nothing unusual going on. Not only no
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: weird gases. Uh, there were no viruses, no bacteria. They
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: couldn't find any kind of biological source. And so they
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: said she died of heart failure brought on by kidney failure,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: which was brought on by this cancer. But everyone's getting sick,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: so they said, we need to up our game here
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: and bring in uh Quincy. Pretty much, they brought in
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: someone from Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and they had better equipment,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: and they were basically charged with sampling tissue and sampling
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: blood and finding out just what had happened to her. Yeah,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: and so they found a lot of stuff that they
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: expected to find, but they found three things that stood
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: out to them. One was A means, which are a
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: metabolite of ammonia. Another thing called niko tinamedes, which is
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: a B vitamin that you sometimes find in drugs because
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: it can produce euphoria and drug dealers will use it
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: to extend their supply some um. And the third one
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: is dimethyl sulfone, which is a metabolite of an amino.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Asaid that the body is usually capable of breaking down,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: so it was an unusual thing to find even though
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: it's found in the body, it's usually broken down and
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have shown up on a test, which means that
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of dimethyl sulfone in Gloria Ramirez's body. Yeah,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: and that's what they honed in on. The A means,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: they said, is probably from breaking down from some drug
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: that we gave her because we were giving her cocktails
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: of drugs to try and stabilize her. We weren't. But
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the e er was the second one. They said, well,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: this is quite a leap in my opinion, that suggested
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: maybe she was using PCP, right, even though they didn't
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: find any PCP in her system. But at any rate,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: they decided to focus on the third one, the dimethyl
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: sul phone, which uh seemed to make a little bit
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: more sense than the other two at least, right, and
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I mean like it was, it was written off much
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: less easily than the other two, so it was the
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: one that was kind of left over. And one of
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the researchers that Lawrence Livermore, said, Hey, dimethyl sulfhone. That's
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: a type of sulfur with a single oxygen bond. But hey,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: get this, if you add two oxygen molecules to to
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: this type of sulfur, you get dimethyl um sulf fox side,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: and that's something that people use as like a topical
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: pain reliever. Maybe Gloria Ramirez was using this dimethyl sulf
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: ox side as a topical pain reliever, because didn't you
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: say that her skin was oily, So maybe that's where
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: it came from. And everyone said, hey, that's great, but
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: still there's nothing toxic um that could knock out an
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: entire e er from dimethyl sulfone or dimethyl sul fox
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: side yes, but they said, oh, some chemical nerds stood up.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: He said, but get this. You add four oxygen molecules
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: and it's just crazy how a couple of molecules can
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: make something deadly. But you add four and you're gonna
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: get dimethyl sulfate. And that is if is a substance that,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: if it's in gaseous form, can kill you in ten minutes.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: And they went, oh, yep, okay, this makes a lot
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: more sense because there can be a burning sensation, there
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: can be tissue death and the eyeballs and mucus membranes.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: It can lead to paralysis and coma and convulsions, and
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: suddenly it starts to come into form a little bit right.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Solawrence Livermore went to the corner of Riverside, California, and said,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: here's what we think. We can't prove this, but here's
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the best theory we've come up with. Gloria Ramirez was
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: using dimethyl sulfoxide d M s O as a topical
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: pain reliever for her cervical cancer, and when she was
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: brought in for heart failure, the paramedics and the e
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: er staff started flooding her system with oxygen. Well, that
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: oxygen combined with breaking down dimethyl dimethyl sulf ox side
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: managed to combine into dimethyl sulfate, and that turned into
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: some sort of gas that emitted from her that poisoned
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the e er staff. And everybody said, okay, good enough,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: that's the best anyone to come up with, kind of
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, that was a decent theory, but they couldn't
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: show the exact um pathway that that might have taken
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and why her body would have converted that sul phone
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: into sulfate. It was a good guess, but they couldn't
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: prove it necessarily, and they still can. It's still unpre
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: even but some people say, well, this is just like
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: no one's ever demonstrated how it happened, but this is
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: probably what happened, say a lot of people. And the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: symptoms didn't exactly match because we mentioned some of the
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: UH doctors and nurses suffered nausea and wretching, and apparently
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: sulfate doesn't produce those symptoms. And nobody said, my eyes
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: burned or my mucous membrane burns, which would be like
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the primary symptom, and everybody in the room would have
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: it if one person was affected from being in close
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: quarters with Gloria Ramirez like that, that's just what would
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: happen first, And so the symptoms not matching. And then
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: on top of that, the fact that Gloria Ramires his
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: family said she never used d M s O kind
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: of shoots some holes into this theory. So over time,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the fact that this has remained a mystery has allowed
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: some other ideas to kind of float to the surface too. Yeah,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: mass hysteria, which is I think that's just a go
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to anytime something happens you can't explain. Yeah, but it
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: was it was particularly sexist to because they're like, look,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: it was mostly female nurses who were subject to this,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: so of course it was mass hysteria, right of course. Uh.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: And then this one is really interesting to me and
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: also not true, but an urban legend arose that the
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: on the hospital staff there were some people smuggling ingredients
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: for meth amphetamine manufacturing through the E R and I
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: V bags, so a little breaking bad operation going through there,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: and that one of the staff accidentally gave her an
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I V bag with these meth amphetamine ingredients and that
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: produced this toxicity. Ye, pretty interesting stuff. I mean, probably
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: not the case, but it's still I mean, you can
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: float interesting ideas like that because it's still not proven. Agreed,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: may never be. Well, that's the case of the toxic
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: corpse of Gloria Ramirez. May she rest in peace? Uh
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And since I said may she rest in peace, that
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: means that this short stuff is over right, Chuck, That's right.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: The short stuff out. Stuff you Should Know is a
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• 12:09
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