life. in terms of just saying, whoa, that s way beyond what i realize, the scoville scale is incredibly useful, i think. in terms of trying to understand the effect of pepper tray on human beings, nationwide we ve all seen pepper spray shot into protesters faces over the last few weeks at occupy wall street events around the country. how much of a difference does it make in terms of the human experience? how it is actually applied, the quantity, the distance from which it s shot at you. it affects the overall dosage. that s a great question. there s a saying in toxicology that the dose makes the poison. one of the things the scoville scale tells us is this is a very high dose. we know capcaisins do two things. they bond to our nervous system and trigger the pain response and they re a little corrosive. they cause a chemical burn. so when you re talking about the kind of levels that you re talking about with commercial grade pepper spray or people
in terms of just saying, whoa, that s way beyond what i realize, the scoville scale is incredibly useful, i think. in terms of trying to understand the effect of pepperç tray on human beings, nationwide we ve all seen pepper spray shot into protesters faces over the last few weeks at occupy wall street events around the country. how much of a difference does it make in terms of the human experience? how it is actually applied, the quantity, the distance from which it s shot at you. it affects the overall dosage. that s a great question. there s a saying in toxicology that the dose makes the poison. one of the things the scoville scale tells us is this is a very high dose. we know capcaisins do two things. they bond to our nervous system and trigger the pain response and they re a little corrosive. they cause a chemical burn. so when you re talking about the kind of levels that you re talking about with commercial grade pepper spray or people