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Iodine: Elements
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Iodine is the heaviest member in a family of chemical elements called halogens. The halogen group includes fluorine, chlorine, bromine, astatine, and iodine. Halogens readily combine with other elements to form salts. At room temperature, iodine is a shiny, dark black, nonmetallic, crystalline solid. Good food sources of iodine are fish and shellfish from the sea, as well as other seaweeds. Milk and eggs, vegetables and fruit contain small amounts of iodine.
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Iodine is a bluish-black, lustrous solid, volatizing at ordinary temperatures into a blue-violet gas with an irritating odor; it forms compounds with many elements, but is less active than the other halogens, which displace it from iodides. Iodine exhibits some metallic-like properties. It dissolves readily in chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, or carbon disulfide to form beautiful purple solutions. It is only slightly soluble in water.
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Iodine naturally occurs in the environment chiefly as dissolved iodide in seawater, although it is ... found in some minerals and soils. The element may be prepared in an ultrapure form through the reaction of potassium iodide with copper(II) sulfate. There are also a few other methods of isolating this element in the laboratory-- for example the method used to isolate other halogens: oxygenation of the iodide in hydroiodic acid (often made in situ with an iodide and sulfuric acid) by manganese dioxide (see below in Descriptive chemistry). Although the element is actually quite rare, kelp and certain plants and algae have some ability to concentrate iodine, which helps introduce the element into the food chain.
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Iodine occurs widely, although rarely in high concentration and never in elemental form. Despite the low concentration of iodine in sea water, certain species of seaweed can extract and accumulate the element. In the form of calcium iodate, iodine is found in the caliche beds in Chile. Iodine ... occurs as iodide ion in some oil well brines in California, Michigan, and Japan.
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Iodine was first isolated from seaweed residues in 1811 by Bernard Courtois, a French manufacturer of saltpeter. The discovery was confirmed and announced by the French chemists Charles Desormes and Nicholas Clément. The nature of the element was further established in 1813 by the French chemist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, who ... gave iodine its name.
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Iodine, a non-metallic trace element, is required by humans for the synthesis of thyroid hormones. Iodine deficiency is an important health problem throughout much of the world. Most of the earth's iodine is found in oceans, and iodine content in the soil varies with region. The older an exposed soil surface, the more likely the iodine has been leached away by erosion. Mountainous regions, such as the Himalayas, the Andes, and the Alps, and flooded river valleys, such as the Ganges, are among the most severely iodine-deficient areas in the world (1).
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