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Chade
February 4th, 2004, 09:53 PM
I've recently become aware of a rather nasty substance, Dimethylmercury. Mercury compounds as poisons have been discussed before, but I don't think this one has, and it has some interesting properties.

The following page details the case of a toxicologist who, during a comparative test, dripped a couple of drops on her gloved hand by accident. Several months later she was dead.

http://www.testfoundation.org/dimethylmercury.htm

Dimethylmercury, a clear liquid, is toxic ("LD50 FOR METHYLMERCURY (MEHG) INJECTED INTO YOLK SAC OF CHICK EMBRYOS ON DAY 5 OF INCUBATION WAS 40-50 UG."), chronic, permeates skin and, as the case in question shows, also passes through latex. Apparently if you spill some on your hand, you'd have to be wearing both silvershield and neoprene gloves to be protected.

As a concerned citizen, of course, I'm concerned that this poison could be used on me by someone I don't know and who the police would be unable to link to me, and who would be several months gone by the time I died. Assuming they covered their tracks, It would be astonishingly difficult to track them down, as the only route available to detectives would be to find out who could perform a synthesis, or who had access to the precursors. And I'm sure they'd have been competent enough to have covered their tracks.

Precursors for example, like mercury iodide or methyl lithium, as detailed in the brief synthesis below:

"As with most dimethyl chemicals, dimethylmercury is synthesized in two steps, each one attaching a methyl group to the central mercury atom. In the case of dimethylmercury, synthesis begins with HgI2 and 2 CH3Li (a total molecular energy of 84.6 kJ/mol). In the first step of the synthesis reaction, the mercury iodide and one of the methyl lithium molecules combine in a double-replacement reaction to form HgICH3 and LiI, releasing 178.6 kJ/mol to settle at a molecular energy of -94.1 kJ/mol. Then, the resulting HgICH3 reacts with another methyl lithium in a second double-replacement reaction, forming a second LiI and dimethylmercury, releasing another 161.3 kJ/mol of energy and winding up with a molecular energy of -255.4 kJ/mol. Thus, the total change in energy during the synthesis of dimethylmercury is -339.9 kJ/mol. "

I have no idea if this is the optimum synthesis, or whether other methods would work with a lower yield. Dimethylmercury is volatile, and needs to be kept in a sealed container and cooled in an ice bath before opening. My first thought of bubbling methane gas from a gas supply through mercury would not work as the dimethylmercury would boil off before it could form. Possibilities may include passing the gas through a chilled pipe (less than freezing) after passing it through the mercury, or cycling the gas so the relevant molar amounts (2 moles of methane to one of mercury) are kept pressurized in a sealed system.

If HgI and methyl lithium were needed, mercury iodide is on megalomanias 'Watched chemicals' list. However:

"when a solution of mercury (ic) chloride containing mercury and chlorine is added to a solution of potassium iodide containing potassium and iodine, such a mutual exchange takes place, the potassium combining with the chlorine to form potassium chloride, and the mercury combining with the iodine forming mercury iodide. The formation of the mercury iodide is seen, as it is of a scarlet colour and does not dissolve in water, whereas both the mercury chloride and the potassium iodide were colourless solutions. If the precipitated mercury iodide be filtered off, the clear solution remaining will be found to contain potassium chloride. The change may be shown by a chemical equation, "

from http://www.ntu.edu.au/education/wardonli.htm

Mercuric chloride is obtainable from either direct action of chlorine on mercury, or may (and this is just a guess on my part) be formed from chlorine containing compounds like bleach. KI is readily obtained in 25ml quantities from any chemist. Chlorine gas production has already been described on this forum.

Methyl lithium (or methyllithium) is a little trickier. A synthesis follows:

"The submitters prepared methyl lithium in the following manner. Methyliodide (425.7 g., 3.00 moles) was added with stirring to 48 g. (7.0 g. atoms) of lithium in 2.5 l. of ether under nitrogen at a rate adequate to maintain gentle reflux of the ether. After 24 hours the solution of methyllithium was decanted into a storage vessel filled with nitrogen, The concentration was estimated in the usual way by hydrolysis of an aliquot and titration with 0.1N hydrochloric acid."

from: http://www.orgsyn.org/orgsyn/orgsyn/prepContent.asp?prep=cv5p0859

Which requires ether and methyliodide. Both of these syntheses are on Rhodium:

http://www.rhodium.ws/chemistry/methyliodide.html

http://www.rhodium.ws/chemistry/ethyl.ether.html

This entire process may not be the simplest, and it might well be possible to make the methyl lithium directly by modifying the methyl iodide synthesis. If you can get any of the later chemicals directly and securely, you can of course skip to that step. The most difficult part of the entire process would be acquisition of Mercury, but not much is required. I suspect the quantity in a thermometer may even provide enough to kill if all your yields were 100%.

A brief warning though. Even research chemists now refuse to work with this substance due to its toxicity. Be very careful.

Zeitgeist
February 5th, 2004, 12:55 AM
Mercury itself, and most of its compounds, are very insoluble and so are not hazardous in themselves. It was discovered, however, that in anaerobic sediments where there was industrial mercury waste, slightly soluble dimethyl mercury, (CH3)2Hg, was produced. If fish containing dimethyl mercury are consumed, the often fatal Minamata Disease results. The disease is named after the Japanese bay in which the mercury was released that brought this to notice. Dimethyl mercury occurs in tuna fish in extremely tiny amounts that are probably only a testimony to how sensitive the detection methods can be. In larger amounts, it is reputed to cause fetal damage, but is very probably no general hazard at all, because it is so rare.

I wonder if you could synth it from Merbromin ("Mercurochrome")

C20H8Br2HgNa2O6

Sarevok
February 5th, 2004, 06:33 AM
I don't think dimethylmercury is THAT toxic... :rolleyes: Even if it is, you have nothing to fear; mercury poisoning can EASILY be detected, so if one kill some idiots using it, one would surely be jailed and bubba would... nevermind.

Mercury itself, and most of its compounds, are very insoluble and so are not hazardous in themselves. Posted by Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist, mercury isn't soluble but it IS hazardous; while mercury nitrate and dimethylmercury, for example, are water and fats soluble, respectively, and they are hazardous too.

Zeitgeist
February 5th, 2004, 06:59 AM
Agreed, some of that was just ripped from a web page and i didn't read all of it carefully.

VX
February 5th, 2004, 09:25 AM
My first thought of bubbling methane gas from a gas supply through mercury would not work as the dimethylmercury would boil off before it could form.

It is impossible to use alkanes as general reagents as they just won’t react. Methyl lithium, would have to be employed to add a methyl group. Methyl magnesium bromide would probably work as well.

You do however probably not need to use the iodide(of methane), using the chloride or bromide salt is far more common in synthesis reactions, and leads to a safer, more controlled reaction.

Although it is perfectly feasible to make this compound in an improvised lab, it is almost certainly not worth the effort as the risk involved in working with such chemicals in an uncontrolled environment is high, and the synth of the precursors will be time consuming. i.e. synth of HgI2, LiMe, MeI etc.

Far more simple and effective toxins can be more or less 'found' in natural materials....... Just think of the trouble the authorities are having with ricin at the moment:rolleyes:

megalomania
February 6th, 2004, 04:51 PM
I would not recommend using compounds besides methyl iodide in the reaction simply because the reactivity of methyl bromide and especially the chloride are so much lower. You might be able to get away with using methyl bromide.

A poison like this is valuable because it seems to take so much time to get the job done. Sure it may be detectable, but will the cops be able to determine when the exposure happened 3 months down the road? Not likely. The poisoning would long since have faded from the minds of victum and witnesses alike. Food products could be randomly poisoned and they would long since have been eaten, thrown away, and forgotton months later leaving nothing for the investigaters to go on.

Imagine if you will a person with a water bottle filled with dimethylmercury at a football game. He has an aisle seat high up, one of the cheap seats. He opens his water bottle and tips it over. The liquid gushes out and starts the slow climb down the steps. 1 liter, maybe 2, flowing like a tiny stream down step after step. There it sits and vaporizes. Hundreds climb these stairs over the course of the next few hours. The fumes linger, invisable, odorless, harmless... until months later when people start turning up dead without any connection.

A student on the last day of classes spills his "soda" right in the entrance to the cafateria minutes before lunchtime. The spill is ignored as the sudents pour in to reach their seats and wait in line to get their food. Hundreds walk through the spill getting it on their shoes and spreading it all over the lunchroom. Withing 30 minutes the entire room is filled with fumes, hundreds have been exposed to toxic levels of dimethylmercury. By the end of the day the chemical has been spread into every classroom, onto every student; thousands could be exposed, but none will know. The summer draws to a close, many students are away at college, then they start to die.

A suicide trooper strolls into the front entrance of a busy New York police station. He sits down, he open a water bottle, he dumps it out under his seat, he gets up and leaves. He repeats this at every precinct in the city. This goes on for weeks, the suicide trooper goes everywhere cops are. Thousands of cops are poisoned, and he himself is overcome with the poison. He crawls off to die and is forgotton. Months later thousands of police officers in New York are striken down. Chaos reins as drug lords and petty crooks rise up to take advantage of the lack of police. Murders, rapes, robberies, arsons... The national guard is called out, the city is shut down, the government is placed on high alert. Every police force in the country is stricken with fear, are they next?

Multiply this by 10 or even 100. Suicide troops visiting every ballgame, every football game, every basketball game. Suicide troops visiting the common rooms of major universities, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, CalTech. Suicide troops visiting every major police station in Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami. They could even visit the lunchrooms of NASA, Boeing, Los Alamos, Ford, GM, Microsoft, Intel, and all of the fortune 500 boardrooms and offices.

Maybe they won't kill that many, but the sheer amount of terror inflicted on this country would paralyze the nation. Our sporting events attacked means no more sports, or large gatherings, attacks at universities would mean our nations greatest minds are in jeporady, an attack on our nations greatest corporations would send stocks plummeting and our economy into such a death spiral that it may take 10 years to emerge from.

NightStalker
February 7th, 2004, 05:40 AM
The elimination of hundreds of the "best and brightest" of Americas future scientists, as direct casualties of mercury poisoning, as well as the degradation of the brains of the thousands of survivors through mercury damaging their neurons, in addition to the toxic contamination of the universities themselves, would constitute a far more lasting threat to America than the loss of a couple of buildings and the expendable bees within.

The minds that inhabit MIT, UCLA, Princeton, etc., are the very pinnacle of technological innovation that feeds Americas economy. The new technologies they develop are why our military is unbeatable, our economy #1 in the world, our culture so pervasive, etc.

Eradicating a few hundred of these elite brains will, in the short term, send us into a mild panic. But it's the long term effect, as the new ideas that would keep us in the forefront of world technology, never become as the brain of the graduate that would have thought them up is now dead or damaged.

This is chaos theory in action. Small actions in the beginning are amplified through time. The ol' "Butterfly flapping it's wings in Japan causes a hurricane in Florida" effect.

A few decades after this kind of attack, we'd be on par with some 2nd tier countries, like europe, not stone-age like the third world, but also not the First World Superpower that we are because of our technological lead.

The worst part, of course, is that this sort of attack would be piss easy to do, and impossible to defend against.

Unlike blowing up a couple of highly visible, but ultimately worthless buildings, killing off the real brains of the nation (politicans are useless!) would have a VERY serious impact on Americas future.

Our "leaders" are worried about protecting bridges and other replaceable infrastructure while the minds that would be the ones to conceive of the bridge, and design the machines to build them, and engineer it into reality, are left totally unprotected and vulnerable.

Even if not one single person died from this mercury attack, the damage to their brains would be sufficient to degrade them, especially insidious as the toxin could linger for months or years, slowly degrading the average IQ of the schools students as they spend years sucking up toxic mercury fumes.

akinrog
February 13th, 2004, 10:01 AM
For some time I was thinking of starting a new thread about this but I have no courage to do so since I am a newbie.

IMHO, succinylcholine is a very fast acting substance which almost immediately paralyse skeletal muscles thereby causing suffocation of the victim. Although direct injection is recommended, MSDS of this substance recommends using respiratory equipment since inhalation may also cause paralysis. In addition the metabolic products of this substance naturally occur in the body like succinic acid in Crebs (sp?) cycle and choline whose purpose I don't exactly know.

If anyone interested I may give out some suggested synthesis of this substance. :)
Edit :
Forgot to add that since the metaboliation products of this substance are naturally occurring (endogenous ?) substance, they are almost impossible to determine in forensic analysis.

hbx53
February 27th, 2005, 11:23 PM
Hereunder I suggest some chemical equations, you have to judge which one is best and how? Secondly, why other are false, with detailed logical answer?

Here under I followed some of the following equations to get the DIMETHYL MERCURY in my laboratory, would you suggest which one is best:

1. 2CH3OH + Hg ===> C2H6Hg + H2O2
Methanol Mercury Dimethyl Hydrogen
Mercury Peroxide

2. HgCl2 + 2CH3OH ===> (CH3)2Hg + 2HCl + O2
Mercuric Methanol Dimethyl Hydrogen Oxygen
Chloride Mercury Chloride
Gas

3. Hg2Cl2 + 4CH3OH ===> 2(CH3)2Hg + 2HCl + H2O + O3
Mercurous Methanol Dimethyl Hydrogen Water Ozone
Chloride Mercury Chloride
Gas

Note: It will appreciated if you suggest any other formula to get DIMETHYL MERCURY in the laboratory with chemical equations.

megalomania
February 28th, 2005, 10:10 AM
I don't know if any of those will work hbx53. I do know the following will work:
2RLi + HgX2 ===> R2Hg + 2LiX
alkyl lithium + mercury halide (Cl or Br) gives dialkyl mercury and lithium halide. For dimethyl mercury use methyl lithium.

hbx53
February 28th, 2005, 10:41 PM
could you provide recipe of methyl lithium? how can we prepare it in a simple way?

FUTI
March 1st, 2005, 05:04 PM
Mega and Chade give you enough info about making it hbx53. Only other synthesis known to me is from anaerobic bacterias exposed to elemental mercury. That substance is volatile and lipid soluble. In Japan they had some problems with mercury spilled in some bay that made a lot of mess because of this.

I remember, that there were a case, a few years ago, of a women who died after poisoning her self with it, during work on some NMR experiment she was doing small spill of solution containing dimethylmercury splashed her glove, after some time she got in hospital in comma and passed away after several days of doctors strugle to get her back. But this is rare example as for making mercury compond generally reduces toxicity of componds in comparison with HgCl2.

static_firefly
March 2nd, 2005, 03:16 AM
I have an intresting book which details the Minamata Disaster of Japan 1950. Its called Catastrophe and Disaster. Its reads that the first the people of the fishing village knew of a problem was when cats started going crazy, even to the point of leaping of jetites and drowning. In 1953 signs of posioning in humans started to rise rapidly. Simptoms included convulsions, lack of muscular control, slurred speech, impaired sight and birth defects such as blind babies and also deformed babies. Scientiest believe that Chiso Chemical Plant discharged Mercuary into the bay which formed methy mecruary when microorganisims broke down orgainic wastes. They believe that the cats where the first to show signs of poisioning because they would eat toxic fish, the poision would build up and because they are much smaller then humans suffer first. By mid 1970s 150 people had died and 1000 more been declaired victims.

Nasty stuff.

FUTI
March 3rd, 2005, 04:52 PM
I just saw that Zeitgeist already stated some of things I tried to post before in much thorough way and in better written post. Considering toxicity of organic mercury compounds take in mind that some of them were in use as antiseptics/desinfectants and topical aids. Mercury as element isn't much toxic, only chronic exposure is possibly dangerous, but some of that story is overblown since dentist would died as trade many years ago, and I can't say I saw conclusive paper on mercury based dental fillings. Anyway all substances are poisonous...its only matter of concentration to achieve effect as Paracelsus stated many centuries ago. Best example known to me is the guy that took MDMA pill I think on some rave party. I side effect is that it can cause uncontrolable thirst. So naturally the guy goes and drink a LOT of water in a incredible short time span (it was between 10-20 liters). What killed him?...electrolite disbalance he caused by his stupidity = heart faliure. BTW this is OT but actually that substance he took was made in course of looking for the cure for obesity (enchanser of metabolism). It does that but strangely some people are more interested in side effects:D.

Jacks Complete
March 3rd, 2005, 06:17 PM
Leah Betts, would-be anti-drug poster corpse, died in the same way.

MDMA is actually safer than Asprin or most other drugs - millions of doses are consumed every month, yet there are only about three or four deaths a year. Yet it is still banned... Very odd, but then, anything fun is banned or restricted. The Government would ban sex if it thought it could get away with it.

2,4,6-TNP
March 4th, 2005, 02:13 AM
I recommend reading US3636020 it may prove to be very useful.

lndshrk
August 27th, 2006, 05:30 AM
A poison like this is valuable because it seems to take so much time to get the job done. Sure it may be detectable, but will the cops be able to determine when the exposure happened 3 months down the road? Not likely.

Actually, quite likely since NAA of portions of the hair are very useful for time
determination of heavy metal poisoning.

Unless your vic recently cut his/her hair, they could easily determine the
time of poisoning to +/- 1 week or so.

Jacks Complete
August 28th, 2006, 04:30 PM
Even then, though, the poisoner would have had ample time to get rid of evidence and lab gear. The average time to find a murder scene is about 8 hours, or something like that. It's much harder to find a clue after a few hours in the rain, let alone months later. Harder still when there wasn't even a clue it was a murder until the autopsy. Just finding the mechanism would be nearly impossible.

FullMetalJacket
August 28th, 2006, 09:01 PM
Megalomania, this is the first time I can honestly say that you scare thew shit out of me.

meyer25
August 29th, 2006, 04:19 PM
Dimethyl mercury may also easily be made of sodium amalgam and methyl iodide or dimethyl sulfate in anhydrous ether or THF:

2MeI + Hg0 + 2 Na0 ----> Me2Hg + 2 NaI

2Me2SO4 + Hg0 + 2 Na0 ----> Me2Hg + 2 MeSO4-Na+

azaleaem
September 11th, 2006, 12:21 PM
It may prove easy to find a dimethylmercury killer once a suspect is in hand. ppb levels of mercury can be detected in the killer's workspace simply by wiping down the walls with a cotton ball. Atomic Absorption instrumentation is that sensitive. No matter how well you clean your workspace, mercury can be found. Better off killing someone by making them eat lots of fish!

megalomania
September 11th, 2006, 11:20 PM
The cops have to find the crime scene first. A storage locker paid for in cash, a unibomber style shack in the woods, an abandoned house, etc., can all be used to great effect. Hell, even a motel room would work. Meth cooks are known to get a motel room for the night, set up their lab, do their business, and roll.

bobo
October 29th, 2006, 12:14 PM
Handling chemicals that kill you even if you wear neoprene, latex and nitrile gloves on top of each other isn't exactly what I want to do on a rainy afternoon. Besides, it would likely be smelled near the spillage if there's enough to gas the victims. Still, this class of compounds has huge potential of use for the smart killer.

Dimethyl mercury has a boiling point in the order of magnitude of water, and should be insoluble. But how about higher alkanes? For example, substituting methyllithium by butyllithium would result in a less volatile compound with more alkane chain on it. While the boiling point would be too high for use as a gas, it's also much less likely to kill the assassin through inhalation. Would longer alkyl chains make the compound less able to travel through rubber as well? These compounds, if applied to an object, would kill by touch and thus be far more selective and useful for targeted killing. Perhaps, if lengthening the alkyl chain makes the compound less permeating, DMSO could be used as a solvent.

megalomania
October 29th, 2006, 08:11 PM
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think dimethyl mercury can pass through the blood brain barrier because it is so small, so lengthening the alkyl chains should make dialkyl mercury compounds significantly less toxic. This is not to say that long chain alkyl mercury compounds are NOT toxic, only that they are less toxic than dimethyl mercury.

The extremely high volatility of dimethyl mercury combined with its toxicity makes it dangerous in the same vein as a chemical weapon, and as such it should be treated like it was a chemical weapon when using or synthesizing. The maximum exposure limit is 0.01 mg per cubic meter of air, but a saturated m3 of air could hold as much as 600g of DMM!

Bluebottle
October 30th, 2006, 06:41 PM
If that is true, (and it probably is) than wouldn't HHgCH3 be an even more potent/volatile toxin?

nbk2000
June 29th, 2007, 10:55 PM
I read in a patent from the '20s for making photographic flash bulbs, that DMM or DEM (preferably) could be added in very small percentages to aluminum powder in glass bulbs, and then heated for 2 days at 140° (DEM) to form in situ TEA (Triethyl Aluminum), which makes the aluminum powder pyrophoric.

This immediately brought to mind the Holy Grail of K3wLz...the Ninja Smoke Bomb!

Thin glass capsules of some size (thinking Christmas tree ornaments) are filled with aluminum powder, the DEM added, baked in a suitably inert atmosphere (CO2 is fine), and then sealed.

Upon breaking, the capsules disperse the powder, which ignites a moment later in a blinding flash and cloud of white smoke. :)

The same effect can be achieved using ferrous oxalate and higher heat, but that lacks L33+ factor. :p

megalomania
June 30th, 2007, 02:02 PM
Kewls, ninja smoke, dimethyl mercury, what could possibly go wrong? :)

azaleaem
July 2nd, 2007, 04:37 PM
Is it possible that in a CO2 atmosphere that the methylmetals will react to produce the metal acetate?

nbk2000
July 2nd, 2007, 09:54 PM
And how is that supposed to happen?

weeThePeople
November 27th, 2008, 02:00 AM
My research has led me to a synthesis of dimethylmercury below. Synthesis takes 2 steps, each one attaching a methyl group to the central mercury atom.

1. HgI2 and 2 CH3Li (a total molecular energy of 84.6 kJ/mol). In this first step of the synthesis reaction, the mercury iodide and one of the methyl lithium molecules combine in a double-replacement reaction to form HgICH3 and LiI, releasing 178.6 kJ/mol to settle at a molecular energy of -94.1 kJ/mol.

2. Then, the resulting HgICH3 reacts with another methyl lithium in a second double-replacement reaction, forming a second LiI and dimethylmercury, releasing another 161.3 kJ/mol of energy and winding up with a molecular energy of -255.4 kJ/mol. Thus, the total change in energy during the synthesis of dimethylmercury is -339.9 kJ/mol.

To summarize.

1. HgI2 + LiCH3 = HgICH3 + LiI
2. HgICH3 + LiCH3 = Hg(CH3)2 and LiI

Can anyone add any more details to this? Specifically how one might go about removing LiI from each step, etc.

Alexires
November 27th, 2008, 03:20 AM
Do you have sources for that or has your research led to you finding Atlantis as well?

weeThePeople
November 27th, 2008, 03:59 AM
My research has led me to a synthesis of dimethylmercury below. Synthesis takes 2 steps, each one attaching a methyl group to the central mercury atom.

1. HgI2 and 2 CH3Li (a total molecular energy of 84.6 kJ/mol). In this first step of the synthesis reaction, the mercury iodide and one of the methyl lithium molecules combine in a double-replacement reaction to form HgICH3 and LiI, releasing 178.6 kJ/mol to settle at a molecular energy of -94.1 kJ/mol.

2. Then, the resulting HgICH3 reacts with another methyl lithium in a second double-replacement reaction, forming a second LiI and dimethylmercury, releasing another 161.3 kJ/mol of energy and winding up with a molecular energy of -255.4 kJ/mol. Thus, the total change in energy during the synthesis of dimethylmercury is -339.9 kJ/mol.

To summarize.

1. HgI2 + LiCH3 = HgICH3 + LiI
2. HgICH3 + LiCH3 = Hg(CH3)2 and LiI

Can anyone add any more details to this? Specifically how one might go about removing LiI from each step, etc.

Do you have sources for that or has your research led to you finding Atlantis as well?

http://64.233.169.132/search?q=cache:Te_WvmkhhcAJ:education.uncc.edu/cmste/Document%2520Hold-OLD/Kevin%2520-%2520Dimethylmercury.doc+dimethylmercury+synthesis&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

There is one source.

Can anyone add any more details to this? Specifically how one might go about removing LiI from each step, etc.

fluoroantimonic
November 27th, 2008, 06:21 AM
I 'm not sure if that route would work.. if you dare play with that stuff

Specifically how one might go about removing LiI from each step, etc.

Well DME is a nonpolar liquid... and LiI is a solid salt... so how do you think they'd be seperated? Also I doubt you'd need to separate after each step, just 2eq LiCH3 and go from there...

Brauer says it is synthed from the grignard CH3MgBr (made by slowly adding CH3Br to an dry ether suspension of magnesium powder). Into an ether solution of CH3MgBr is slowly added the correct amount of HgCl2 over an hour or so. Filter off Mg halides, then reflux for for 10 hours, add water, mix, separate the phases and distill off the ether to get pretty pure DME at a 50-70% yield...

This stuff has a lot of potential for mass destruction, I think possibly more so than the most effective organophosphorus nerve agents... If properly released, a kilo of it could kill 10000 people easy and if done effectively, they wouldn't even know they were exposed, developing symptoms weeks or months later, and having a very high probability of dying, even with the best chelation treatment... The hard part would be synthesizing it without killing yourself.