Wow, I didn’t know this was possible!
An East Tennessee couple is charged with murder in the death of the man’s 5-year-old daughter after an autopsy revealed the girl died from being forced to drink more than 2 liters of grape soda and water….The girl was blue and not responding. She had severe brain damage. An investigation revealed the girl had been forced to drink the water and soda over one to two hours as punishment. The massive intake of fluid caused her brain to swell and herniate.
Horrible! Again, I didn’t know that could be the end result. But why did they do this?
Abuse is abuse, and this indeed is NOT a “Gun Death”, so it doesn’t count!
Oh yea, you can die if you drink too much water too quickly. It’s usually pretty hard for adults though I can certainly see it happening in this case with a 5 year old. I forget the exact process but I think it dilutes your blood too much and causes brain damage or something. Generally you’d have to keep drinking water well after you feel like you should stop for this to happen.
I know you can kill animals by injecting too much saline. I think it’s thinning the blood, causing hypoxia, and congestive heart failure.
But I’m not too sure of the mechanism, as I avoid doing it to my animals.
This happened to an adult woman several years ago. There was a radio station contest for a Nintendo Wii, back when it was new. The contestants were all mass quantities of drinking water. One of the stories mentioned this happens several times a year to people trying to win bets, etc. Pure Oxygen at greater than atmospheric pressure can be toxic.
“The dose makes the poison.” – Paracelsus