Analyzing acute borax poisoning by determining the boric acid concentration

Abstract

Borax is a borate compound used as a cleaning agent and as fertilizer, and its use as a material for homemade ‘slime’ has been increasing in recent years. There are few reports of acute borax poisoning. We describe a case of acute poisoning in which approx. 11 g of borax was ingested by a woman in her teens. We attempted to quantify the amount of borax ingested by performing a colorimetric analysis, which has been used to quantify boric acid. The colorimetric analysis of boric acid was conducted using a spectrophotometric determination of boric acid by the curcumin method, and serum samples were used for this measurement at approx. 4 h after the ingestion of borax. The results revealed a serum concentration of boric acid at 68.28 μg/mL (1.104 mmol/L). The borax concentration calculated using this boric acid concentration was 105.3 μg/mL. These results demonstrate that the spectrophotometric determination of boric acid by the curcumin method can be applied in cases of acute borax poisoning.