NORMAL

MARIJUANA

CAFFEINE

BENZEDRINE

SPRAYED ON SPIDERS, PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS TRIGGERDERANGED WEBS

Experiment suggests toxicity-testing technique

DRUGS, YOU AND YOUR COMMUNITY

WEAVE A TANGLED WEB

Spray something nasty on a spider, and it will spin a haywire web.

That is what reaserchers

at NASA's Marshall Space Center have found.

Citing previous studies, they propose using spiders instead of mammals as toxicity testers.

Because spider webs resemble crystal lattices, toxologists can employ statistical crystallography to

guage a substances toxicity.

That means analyzing the number of completed cells, radial and other geometric structures in the web.

The more toxic a substance, the more quantifiably deformed is the web.