14 Responses:

1. malokai says:

   16 years ago at 10:22 pm

   Hmm.. possible for people to be allergic to it apparently.

2. whumpdotcom says:

   16 years ago at 11:11 pm

   There's an apocryphal tale I heard in my misspent youth in the SCA about this. Someone done up in mad prophet drag appeared before a 'King' and told him he would "piss blue upon the morning, then die." They'd mixed his wine with the powder.

   • corneliusagain says:

     16 years ago at 1:33 am

     George III peed blue.

   • sherbooke says:

     16 years ago at 3:57 am

     According to the BBC, George III's pee was wine-red. This is a symptom of porphyria. Ironically, 'the arsenic from the very medication he was being given to control his "madness" was triggering more attacks.' I had a similar experience with an asthma inhaler: taking it made my condition worse not better. Plus ça change.

3. usufructer says:

   16 years ago at 11:32 pm

   (image note: The above picture is not of actual urine, though it closely resembles the effect the dye will have)

   What kind of halfhearted experimentation is that?

   Another possibility: mix this chemical with DMSO, and add it to someone's body paint. Not only will their body paint be permanent, but they'd get the blue pee too.

4. ihnatko says:

   16 years ago at 11:37 pm

   How cool could this be? This trick was in an episode of "M*A*S*H" like 25 years ago.

5. benediktus says:

   16 years ago at 3:13 am

   ... so much for sustitution liquids in tampon ads.

6. greatevil says:

   16 years ago at 4:24 am

   you can get a whole new "water park" night to go along with it!

7. sclatter says:

   16 years ago at 6:06 am

   Our Cell Bio teacher in undergrad told us about it. They knew this guy who always drank massive quantities of grape juice, so they fed him this story about some weird STD going around that caused your pee to turn blue, and then they slipped the methylene blue into his grape juice. Hilarity ensued.

   So of course we had to try it. Methylene blue is commonly used in certain histological stains, so it was sitting on the shelf in the science building. We swiped some, and some of my friends slipped it into the Coke of a guy we were hanging around at the time. What I heard, may or may not be true, is that he pissed blue for three days. (I slightly disbelieve this, as when I took fluorescein my pee stopped glowing within a matter of hours. Then again, that was injected IV, so who knows.)

   Anyway, some time later we bought up the original prank with our cell bio teacher, and he said, "Oh yes, that was great, but you have to be very careful, because histological grade methylene blue often contains arsenic; you have to get the medical grade."

   Yikes.

   Lucky for us, nothing bad happened to the guy. But as the article said, the MSDS is your friend. :-)

8. unspuncapricorn says:

   16 years ago at 7:11 am

   a. notice icon--I am drinking some last call concoction at the DNA, presumably with that awful blue curacao.

   b. I learned about methalyne blue on ER which, it seems, stole it from MASH.

   c. The movie Swimming Pool with Charlotte Rampling is awesome
   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324133/

9. phoenixredux says:

   16 years ago at 8:42 am

   Brilliant. What could possibly go wrong??

   (Better make sure the liability insurance is paid up for the DNA Lounge, JWZ.)

10. elegantelbow says:

    16 years ago at 8:55 am

    I understand that eating beet greens will turn your urine purple.

11. violentbloom says:

    16 years ago at 9:58 pm

    yes but will it stain my tapeworm blue?

    • dzm6 says:

      16 years ago at 5:17 pm

      That sounds like an absolutely terrible lounge-style torch song.