Recreational gasoline sniffing: acute gasoline intoxication and latent organolead poisoning. Case reports and literature review.

Gasoline is a readily obtainable intoxicant that unfortunately lends itself to habitual abuse by sniffing, a practice found particularly among children and adolescents. The concerted effects of the multiple hydrocarbon and other constituents of gasoline result in a predictable acute toxic syndrome. Organoleads, primarily tetraethyl lead (TEL), cause a separate toxicologic symptom-sign complex that overlaps with the initial acute toxic syndrome. The different clinical symptomatology, effects on hemoglobin synthesis, and response to chelation therapy are all in keeping with the view that organolead poisoning is a separate and distinct toxicologic entity from that of classical elemental lead poisoning or "plumbism".