Karen Wetterhahn

Dartmouth College has since established an award in Wetterhahn's name (The Karen E. Wetterhahn Graduate Fellowship in Chemistry, created in 1998 and funded by the Karen E. Wetterhahn Memorial Fund) to encourage other women to pursue careers in science. It is a one-year fellowship given to an exceptionally good chemistry graduate student who will receive their PhD within two years. Whenever possible, a woman is preferred for the award. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences also maintains an annual award, for a graduate student or post-doctoral researcher, in honor of Karen Wetterhahn (the Karen Wetterhahn Memorial Award).

Approximately three months after the initial accident Wetterhahn began experiencing brief episodes of abdominal discomfort and noted significant weight loss. The more distinctive neurological symptoms of mercury poisoning, including loss of balance and slurred speech, appeared in January 1997, five months after the accident. At this point, tests proved that she had a debilitating mercury intoxication. Her blood and urinary mercury content were measured at 4,000 µg L and 234 µg L, respectively – both are well above their respective toxic thresholds of 200 µg L and 50 µg L (blood and urine reference ranges are 1 to 8 µg L and 1 to 5 µg L).

Despite aggressive chelation therapy, her condition rapidly deteriorated. Three weeks after the first neurological symptoms appeared, Wetterhahn lapsed into what appeared to be a vegetative state punctuated by periods of extreme agitation. One of her former students said that "Her husband saw tears rolling down her face. I asked if she was in pain. The doctors said it didn't appear that her brain could even register pain." Wetterhahn was removed from life support and died on June 8, 1997, less than a year after her initial exposure.

On August 14, 1996, Wetterhahn, a specialist in toxic metal exposure, was studying the way mercury ions interact with DNA repair proteins, and she was investigating the toxic properties of another highly toxic heavy metal, cadmium. She was using dimethylmercury, at the time the standard internal reference for Hg nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements.

Wetterhahn was born in Plattsburgh, New York. She earned her bachelor's degree from St. Lawrence University in 1970 and her doctorate from Columbia University in 1975. Her doctoral work was supervised by Stephen J. Lippard. She joined Dartmouth's faculty in 1976 and published more than 85 research papers. In 1990, Wetterhahn helped establish Dartmouth College's Women in Science Project (WISP), which helped to raise the share of women science majors from 13 to 25 percent at Dartmouth College and has become a national model.

Karen Elizabeth Wetterhahn (October 16, 1948 – June 8, 1997), also known as Karen Wetterhahn Jennette, was an American professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, who specialized in toxic metal exposure. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 due to accidental exposure to the extremely toxic organic mercury compound dimethylmercury (Hg(CH3)2). Protective gloves in use at the time of the incident provided insufficient protection, and exposure to only a few drops of the chemical absorbed through the gloves proved to be fatal after less than a year.