A very surprising thing learned today about a somewhat common wood [View all]

[1-Old-Man]

There is a hardwood that comes from central and south America that is commonly used in outdoor applications. The wood comes from the Ipe tree though it goes by a number of names, frequently "Brazilian Walnut" and similar names. You see the wood used for decks and other applications where a very durable and more or less water proof wood is needed, which this stuff is well suited to but not where the wood is finished because it is very hard on machine tools; it has a high silica content and silica is very hard and wears out steel.

Among its other characteristics is its toxicity. Its dust, like so many other woods, is carcinogenic but better known of its effects is that if you get a splinter of it the wound will fester badly. Now here is the thing. A local woodworking shop has a stockpile of this stuff and now and then they get an order to make something out of it. All of the guys in the shop have worked with it and one of the guys is the son of a friend of ours. It turns out the boy (in his 20's) was sitting around at lunch with the guys and mentioned that he had got a couple of splinters from the wood and that they had become infected - nothing new there. But then he said something else, that when he got the splinters that night he had extremely vivid (and as he later told me dam near an hallucinogenic) dreams. Every person around the table agreed, the same thing had happened to them. They got the splinter(s) and then that night came the dreams.

I just thought this would be of interest to someone. I searched to see if this effect had been discussed elsewhere but came up empty handed. It seemed awfully interesting to me.