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Published online 16 May 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.832
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Athlete's foot remedy for red tides
Antifungal compounds might help to stop harmful algal blooms.
Blooms of toxic algae that stain huge swathes of the oceans red could one day be controlled with a compound more usually used to treat athlete’s foot, say Japanese researchers. The team has even designed a prototype ocean-going craft to dispense the antifungal where it might be needed.
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Given: ocean one meter deep and 25 km^2 (a long beach or small bay). That is 25 million tonnes of water. Terbinafine is prescribed 6 mg/kg oral thus requiring ~150,000 kilograms of terbinafine for the red tide. Unlikely, expensive, hazardous in unknown ways. Consider the carbon footprint of terbinafine manufacture and transporation.
Why would the dosage of terbinafine for a human have any bearing on the amount needed for direct application to the algae blooms?
In Nakashima's paper the LC50 for terbinafine was 1 μg mL−1 (eq. 1 mg /liter) in the case of H. circularisquama, so that's mean that in the example from above the amount to be used should be 25,000 kilograms. A little too big I presume.
LC_50 gives 50% lethality in pure culture. Therapeutic levels are some two standard deviations larger concentration. Seawater is not pure culture. Neither colonization nor dilution is confined to the first meter of depth. Degradation in sunlight. The original estimate of ~150,000 kilograms of terbinafine/red tide is realistic. A lot of km^2 are to be non-specifically treated, http://www.mobilegeographics.com/tideimages/tidesta3220.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:La-Jolla-Red-Tide.780.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2294/2105252872_e5ee3c45f3.jpg