Methemoglobinemia — Sleuthing for a New Cause

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Abstract
In Eleven Blue Men,1 a medical detective figures out that a group of derelicts have become cyanotic because they have methemoglobinemia — the iron in at least 10 percent of their hemoglobin molecules has become oxidized, from Fe++ to Fe+++. Furthermore, he attributes the methemoglobinemia to their having eaten oatmeal cooked with sodium nitrite instead of sodium chloride. But other people have eaten the same oatmeal without turning blue — why? After further investigation, it seems likely that the derelicts added extra "salt" (really sodium nitrite) to their cereal and that the difference was in the amount ingested, . . .