Always be careful with chemicals

[mikephillips]

Ran across this on the web, thought it was important enough we all see it.
I personally have used brake and carb cleaners as general purpose solvents to remove dirt and grease, but always outside and so far never on items I intended to weld.

http://www.brewracingframes.com/id75.htm

 

[MikeH]

And wear gloves

I used a variety of cleaners and solvents trying to remove probably 40+ years of grease and road grime from the oil pan on my '65 Mustang. Even used some steel wool. Tore up my fingers and severely dried them out. To the point that if I use dish detergent they still crack open. Like deep paper cuts.

 

[skywords]

No Lifegaurd on Duty

 

[Nickodell]

I doubt that it was really phosgene. Although some of the symptoms he reported are consistent with phosgene poisoning, some - like kidney failure and elevated blood sugar - were not. These are the classic symptoms:

coughing
burning sensation in the throat and eyes
watery eyes
blurred vision
difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
nausea and vomiting

Other effects that may appear up to 48 hours after contact, even if the person feels better or appears well, include the following:

difficulty breathing
coughing up white to pink-tinged fluid
low blood pressure
heart failure

And phosgene doesn't smell of chlorine; its odor is usually referrred to as a pleasant one, resembling new-mown hay, which is why when it was first used as a weapon in WWI people ignored it until the troops began to fall ill and die, and even then it took some time until the authorities connected phosgene exposure to the 48-hour delay in symptoms.

Hydrogen chloride, also produced by heating chlorinated organic compounds like brake cleaner, also generally produces the same symptoms as phosgene, except for the delayed effect.

My feeling is that he actually inhaled a near-fatal dose of the brake cleaner itself, which would account for a lot of the other symptoms and is the main reason why chloroform and carbon tetrachloride have been banned for many years. You could buy "carbon tet" for spot removing until the 1960s, and as a kid I remember some clowns huffing it, with the resultant kidney failure and permanent damage to other organs, and the nervous system. Others have tried the same with "perc" (dry cleaning fluid) and other similar compounds, with similar results.

 

[skywords]

A simple solution like alcohol almost killed me. I was servicing the prop de-ice in a Gooney bird and spilled about 4 gallons inside the cabin. I almost didn't make it out.

 

[Nickodell]

Glad you survived, Rick. But a lot of people have been killed or seriously injured by alcohol in bottles marked XXX. My closest call with poison gas was when, the day before the Christmas break, some maniac in college connected a hydrogen sulfide generator to the ventilation system as a prank.

Hydrogen sulfide rates in toxicity close to hydrogen cyanide. True, you can smell its "rotten egg" odor initially, but it's a familiar stink in a chemical lab so nobody would remark on it, and the olfactory nerves quicky become paralyzed by the gas; after a few minutes you don't smell it any more. Luckily, when students, including me, began to show symptoms - like vomiting and falling over - an alert prof called college police for help and we were all dragged into the open air and given oxygen.

Nobody ever found out who the culprit(s) were. A student accidentally (we assume) swallowed some potassium cyanide the year after I graduated, and died. 200mg (one 150th of an ounce) is instantly fatal - ask Herman Goering. Actually, it is not as toxic as some other substances, such as aresenic oxide or strychnine, both of which require smaller doses. What makes cyanide different is its speed. Swallow a lethal dose and you're unconscious in 10-20 seconds, and dead from cardiac arrest in a few minutes.

The most toxic substance known is something that women (men?) have injected into their faces! The lethal oral dose of botulinum toxin is 0.00005mg, or 1/100,000 the weight of a mosquito. An ounce would be enough to kill every person in North America. Enough to kill every human on earth could be carried in your pocket. It paralyzes muscles, which is why minute (extremely minute!) amounts injected into wrinkles and frown lines can smooth them out for a while.

(The old chemist yawns and stretches.)