Precautions
Orally, potassium chloride is toxic in excess; the LD50 is around 2.5 g/kg (meaning that a lethal dose for 50% of people weighing 75 kg (165 lb) is about 190 g (6.7 ounces)). Intravenously, this is reduced to just over 30 mg/kg, but of more concern are its severe effects on the cardiac muscles: high doses can cause cardiac arrest and rapid death, thus the aforementioned use as the third and final drug delivered in the lethal injection process.
Read more about this topic: Potassium Chloride
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“We must take precautions against being prematurely honed sharp—since at the same time we are being prematurely honed thin.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, “Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.””
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)
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—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)