Water water everywhere

February 22, 2007 3:25 PM

Could you water plants with heavy water? What would be the effect? Would they survive/thrive?
posted by barrakuda to Home & Garden (3 answers total)

The "semi-heavy water" section of the wikipedia entry is somewhat misleading because you can buy highly pure (99%+) heavy water. It's expensive but not ridiculously so: Aldrich will sell you a liter for $840.

Some useful information about heavy water toxicity: here, here, here, here, and here (this seems to be the original mouse paper the others site). Based on the fact that D2O inhibits microtubule polymerization at high enough concentrations I expect it would be toxic to plants at similar levels as it is to animals.
posted by pombe at 4:35 PM on February 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

Semi-heavy water is I believe what the idiot Wikipedians are calling the hypothetical compound, DOH. Heavy water is D₂O.
posted by ikkyu2 at 5:55 PM on February 22, 2007

I would like to invite everyone here to fix that article. Please?
posted by Richard Daly at 6:03 PM on February 25, 2007