I know the ng means nanogram

But I’m curious how would I say the above line of 2.1 ng/kg

For context I got it from this paragraph

a lethal dose of 1.3–2.1 ng/kg in humans

Would it be

2.1 nanogram per kilogram?

Also if I wanted to write that as a decimal number how would i write that?

  • andrewta@lemmy.worldOP
    12·
    11 months ago

    So are they saying nanograms of the stuff per kilograms of the human?

    In other words are they saying it’s a ratio compared to the weight of the person?

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      12·
      11 months ago

      Yeah, personally I would say that it’s per kg bodyweight.

      But I would also do my darndest to try write it, since “ng/kg” is kind of just nonsense. It makes it look like you could divide the grams out of that to get a fixed ratio, which is not correct at all.

    • RegalPotoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      Yeah - the dose is the poison (if you drink enough water it becomes toxic), so if you are talking precisely you need to describe the concentration of a substance in which it is likely lethal to a person, and that’s typically expressed as mass of a substance per mass of bodyweight. A lot of the time you will also see this expressed as an “LD50” value; the dose at which you’d expect 50% of people to die. This accounts for the fact that people’s metabolisms vary quite widely.

      ~1ng/kg ~= 0.08ug for a typical (~80kg) person, which is a very tiny amount - whatever you are talking about is incredibly toxic.