AP Chem Blog

My mom said that zinc can cure the common cold. I had never heard that before and it got to wondering if it actually does. There are many articles that say it does cure the common cold and some that don't so i went into our medicine cabinet and found some zinc cold relief. It says in the ingredients that there is 13.3mg of Ionic zinc from Zincum Gluconicum. So I started off by finding out what zinc actually is. Zinc is an element, it is a metal, it has the atomic number 30, the abbreviation is Zn, and is the 24th most abundant element in the earth's crust. Some properties of zinc are that its melting point is 420 degrees Celsius, its boiling point is 907 degrees Celsius, the atomic mass is 65.409, and it becomes ductile and malleable when heated.  So, why would my mom say that zinc cures the common cold? Well, zinc is essential for human life. When someone has to little zinc they can lose their appetite, have a decreased sense of taste and smell, slow wound healing, and you could even get skin sores. On the other hand, i could see why someone would says that what my mom said was false. When you have to much zinc it can cause many health problems such as: stomach cramps, skin irritations, vomiting, nausea, and anaemia. So there are reasons to believe that it would cure the common cold and reasons against. So what to think? I looked it up and it seems to me that the web sites that say that zinc does cure the common cold have a zinc product and are just trying to make money, but the sites that did not have a zinc product said that zinc did not cure the common cold. I don't know what to think. Maybe next time I get sick i'll take some kind of zinc medicine and see if I feel better. Until proved otherwise I believe that zinc does not cure the common cold because if it did everyone would take it some how and no one would get sick.







http://www.lenntech.com/periodic/elements/zn.htm#Zinc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc Zinc Cold Relief (drugmart brand)