How is botulinum toxin used for medical and comestic purposes when a very small dose can kill a person?
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Toxicity is a property of dose, not something substances are or are not. Everything has a dose at which it is toxic, and a dose at which it is (relatively) safe. People have died in water drinking contests because they drank so much water, it reached toxic levels. Not the stuff in the water, the water itself.
What they do with botox is put a VERY tiny amount in a diluent. Like putting a drop of ink in a bottle of water. If you have 1,000,000:1 ratio, then you need 1 million mL of water to get 1 mL of ink. That’s what they do with the botox. Dilute it so much that you need a large amount of the diluent to get any botulinum. This is so that it is much harder to accidentally overdose someone and either kill them to do permanent damage.
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