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“It's not possible to overdose on fentanyl by touching it,” said Dr. Andrew Stolbach, an emergency physician and medical toxicologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. “If it was absorbed well through the skin, people wouldn’t inject it and snort it in order to get high.”
Higher doses and several hours of time are required for an actual user to overdose on the deadly synthetic opioid, Dr. Gina Dahlem, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, told the Daily Mail.
It doesn’t happen suddenly, she said.
"We have a lot of scientific evidence and a good knowledge of chemical laws and the way that these drugs work that says this is impossible," Ryan Marino, medical director for toxicology and addiction at University Hospitals in Cleveland, told NBC News.
For nearly five years, alarmists have either claimed or suggested that you can overdose from incidental fentanyl contact – by picking up money, for instance, touching blue painter's tape or gripping shopping carts.
Panic attacks aggravated by such “warnings” would more likely be the cause of the supposed medical episodes than a dose of fentanyl itself, the International Journal of Drug Policy concluded.
“The systems exhibited by those who’ve claimed to be stricken by fentanyl are fully consistent with a stress/anxiety response,” professors Lewis S. Nelson and Jeanmarie Perrone of the Division of Medical Toxicology at Rutgers Medical School in Newark co-wrote in a paper on the subject.
These include "dizziness, blurry vision, pallor, weakness, sweatiness, high blood pressure, chest pain, heart palpitations, anxiety, and occasionally seizure-like activity," Nelson and Perrone noted.
These "aren't consistent with the signs and symptoms of opioid poisoning — the triad of slowed breathing, decreased consciousness, and pinpoint pupils," they wrote.
What mostly happens is known as "the nocebo effect" -- the opposite of the placebo effect -- in which the very thought of exposure triggers a physical response, the professors noted.
"Pharmacists have been working with fentanyl for years without reports of passive exposure," they added. "The same holds for surgeons, anesthesiologists, emergency physicians, and others working in operating rooms and emergency departments, where fentanyl is routinely administered as a pain reliever."
SEE: ‘Passive’ fentanyl exposure: more myth than reality (Lewis S. Nelson and Jeanmarie Perrone)
The definitive fact-checking site, Snopes.com, has debunked the fentanyl myth several times over the past few years.
It did so again this week after Kentucky resident Renee Parsons claimed that she was stricken by what she believes was a trace amount of fentanyl on a dollar bill that she found in a McDonald's bathroom in Nashville.
Parsons said her husband “began to somewhat lecture me” about the dangers of fentanyl-contaminated cash when it “hit me like a ton of bricks.”
“All of a sudden I felt it start in my shoulders,” she wrote. “[T]he feeling was quickly going down my body and it would not stop.”
Parsons said her husband rushed her to a hospital after she went numb. She was treated and released after recovering.
The moral of her experience: “I don’t care if it’s a $20 bill or a $100 bill do not touch it!!!”
The post went viral, of course. By the end of the week, it had generated 30,000 comments and 355,000 shares.
It alarmed some and amused others.
A police spokesman in Nashville told Snopes that an officer called to the emergency room discovered that Parsons didn’t require Narcan to be revived. Nor did preliminary tests find any drugs in her system, the spokesman said. There also wasn’t any drug residue on the bill.
Dr. Rebecca Donald, a fentanyl expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said Parsons certainly could have had a reaction “if she had inadvertently rubbed her nose and exposed that drug to some of the blood vessels in her nose or licked her fingers or rubbed her eyes.”
Parsons, however, said she wiped her hands right away.
Claims of dollar-bill overdoses haven’t been limited to civilians.
The San Diego County (CA) Sheriff’s Office posted bodycam footage last summer of a deputy stricken by what supposedly was an overdose caused by fentanyl contact that nearly killed him. The video was later removed.
Last month, the Perry County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee posted a Facebook warning about fentanyl-tainted dollar bills. Their colleagues in Giles County upped the ante with a photo of a penny next to a minuscule amount of white powder.
It came with the erroneous warning: “The amount of powder next to the penny (if fentanyl laced) is more than enough to kill anyone that it comes into contact with.”
It isn’t just greenbacks, either, the fear mongers say.
Five years ago, a rumor that someone was lacing the handles of Walmart shopping carts with fentanyl went viral after a police department in Arkansas shared it. The department removed the post and apologized for the error.
Then there’s this bit of what Snopes calls “scarelore”:
There’s a simple reason why such urban myths persist, according to the international drug policy journal.
“Research suggests that misinformation receives far higher -- and lasting -- 'excess visibility’ than corrective content,” the IJDP reported.
If you think about it, drug-sniffing police dogs would be dropping like flies if the myth was true.
For comparison, experts point to fentanyl patches, an anesthetic used in hospitals. Unlike what’s sold on the street, the patches deliver the drug directly to the bloodstream.
Even if someone were covered in fentanyl patches, it would take 10-15 minutes to absorb 100 micrograms, the American College of Medical Toxicology wrote.
How much is 100 micrograms? About 1/20 of the amount it takes to overdose.
In the end, there’s one thing that all of the experts agree on.
“Fentanyl panic has real-world consequences,” as the international drug policy journal put it.
This can “deflect from real solutions,” with resources wasted on “fictitious risks” instead of going toward treatment and harm reduction, the journal added. “Better tools are needed to change misinformed health narratives.”
Dr. Todd Korthuis, a professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, agreed.
“It’s important to correct this widely circulated myth,” he said.
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