TIL - Blue Skin Color Exists

Not the blue man group, that is paint. I'm talking about real skin color, and like most people I always thought that the only colors were white, black, and shades of brown; I am wrong. Blue skin color exists.

www.tmithings.com

The Fugate family of Kentucky provides an interesting story where many members of the family had blue skin.

The cause of the blue skin color is from the blood disorder Methemoglobinemia which causes a large excess of Methemoglobin to be produced. Typically, the average person will have less than 1% of this Methemoglobin in their blood, and if it rises to over 20% it will cause severe health effects. But when the levels are between 10% - 20%, a person will develop blue skin without any symptoms or health problems as was the case with the Fugate family. Many members lived well beyond the life expectance of the time into their 80's and 90's, so besides the blue color skin, they lived basically an unrestricted life similar to you and me.

This disorder is extremely rare and is typically caused by one of several genetic defects on recessive genes.

As with the Fugate family, the abundance of the blue skin was found to be the cause of 2 distinct families inter-breading with the recessive genes, making a relatively "pure" genetic pool and the higher possibility of receiving the disorder. Although the Fugate family has since left the strict family lineage of the 1800's along with the blue skin trait, one of the decendents Benjamin stacy was born with blue skin in 1975 but has since grown out of it.

Another man named Paul Karason aka. "smurf man" also had blue skin. His condition wasn't genitic tho, but was caused by long-term use of silver sompounds to treat bad dermatitis.