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Why doesn't a class of compounds count as a compound? "Bromide" is both the name of the ion Br- (not a compound), AND the name of a class of chemical salts that ARE compounds. S B H arris 22:45, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
What is it used for in food stuffs and breadmaking? I understand that iodine historically was used, which was good for you, but many commercial manufacturers switched to bromine in the last 20-30 years because it was cheaper. For what ingredients or processing? And doesn't it behave like fluoride to compete for iodine receptors in the body, which is an essential micronutrient? 66.178.144.154 ( talk) 07:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Although journal articles from 1949 describe deaths from the use of lithium chloride as a salt substitute, there appears to be no support (certainly not cited here) for the statement that lithium bromide was ever used as a salt substitute. I would remove this statement unless it can be verified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.236.222.195 ( talk) 10:34, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
Yesterday I removed material from this article that was referenced to the 2014 research paper "Bromine Is an Essential Trace Element...." Since this left some gaps in the text, I put back what was there just before this material was added on 15 May 2014. One item I put back was "Bromine has no essential function in mammals," which was unsourced. My edits were commented with WP:MEDRS. These edits were reverted with the comment "Understand MEDRS, but radical excision of information should be discussed, and wholesale denial is without source."
So first a little background. A while back I started working on the article Composition of the human body, saw questionable health claims being made for various elements, and decided to look into how these things are decided. In the US, the FDA maintains a list of essential trace elements. They get their information from the National Research Council (United States) and the National Academy of Medicine. Both of those organizations review published researched and summarize their findings. Then I looked into the World Health Organization, the European Food Safety Authority, the (UK) Food Standards Agency, the National Health Service (England), Health Canada and a bunch of others. I just wanted to get a sense of whether scientists in the US are on the same page as the rest of the world.
What I learned is that the FDA's list is widely accepted. Another dozen or so trace elements are being looked at as possibly essential, some more seriously than others. For example, boron and nickel are high on everybody's list. In the UK they are legally defined as essential, even though their scientists say their essentiality has not been definitively established. In other words, there is a broad general agreement on which trace elements are higher or lower on the list. Bromine is not one of the stronger contenders. Meanwhile, the 2014 study seems impressive, but it doesn't seem to meet the standard of WP:MEDRS. The "radical excision" I made was only an excision of material directly dependent on that one source (the 2014 study), some in the lede, the rest in the Biology section.
As for "wholesale denial" of bromine's role in biology, I was just restoring that sentence to its state on 15 May 2014, the day it was changed to reflect the 2014 study. However, I now have two sources that may present a more balanced view on this:
"Only limited circumstantial evidence exists to support the essentiality of bromine. Before barbiturates were used, doctors prescribed bromide for sleep." [1]
"Although a small amount of bromine is present as bromide in all living things and some species even produce organo-bromine compounds, no biological role has been identified for this element in humans. It has long been suggested that some bromide is essential to health, but this has not been proved."
[2]
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Zyxwv99 (
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01:36, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
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I found this section substantially short of Wikipedia standards in tone and content, and deleted it. My reasons include the following:
In short, I removed the section not because it was all wrong, but because it wasn't up to the standards of wikipedia, nor the rest of the article.