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/sci/ - Science & Math

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2968984 No.2968984 [Reply] [Original]

What's the most lethal chemical you've ever handled, /sci/? How scared shitless were you?

>> No.2968989

>>2968984
Gen Chem handling, like -2 pH acids bare-handed...

Spilled some of that shit on the table, threw NaOH on that bitch and watched sodium crystals materialize like it came out of nowhere.

>> No.2969012

Fun stuff like HF, HI, HCl(gas). Generally careful, but not paranoid careful.

Work with sodium cyanide a lot, have to crush it up into a powder for organometallic nitrile synthesis. Try not to breathe it in like a boss.

Tert-butyl lithium, try not to get in on my clothes and die like the girl from UCLA (I think UCLA...). I'm a chemist, I work with anything and everything.

>> No.2969013

Hydroflouric Acid at 40%
>ohgodwhatwasidoing.jpg

12 molar NaOH was pretty damn scary also mostly because it does shit to ya but you don't feel it.

Only time I was legitimatly scared was when I got some blue stuff that some idiot left on a water bottle nozzle (messing around in the lab) on my hand and it started burning, just washed my hand and I was fine after that though.

Also breathed in some chemical from a copper reactions lab back in High School. Tasted extremely bitter and is a 3 on the fire square in health and apparently corrodes your eyes, I had no idea at the time.

>> No.2969034

Back when I was 12, I mixed up weakened HCl with bleach while in the bathroom with the door closed. Chlorine gas formed, took a couple accidental breaths. Scared shitless I dropped the test tube onto the sink and bolted out.

feelsbadman.jpg

>> No.2969051

The most lethal chemical: Man.

(but srsly, probably the high-end solvents I worked with during my job at a paint store... No idea which was the most dangerous, just that we should use lots of precautions around any of 'em.)

>> No.2969066

Phenol-chloroform extraction

>> No.2969067

Worked in a chemical pilot facility that employed chlorine and phosgene in one process. Scary thing about phosgene is that if you can smell it it is already concentrated enough to kill you...

>> No.2969083

boiling sulphuric acid, fresh from the stove. those were good times.

>> No.2969093

>>2969067
BUT THEN HOW DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE

>> No.2969108

The people working with HF must have balls of steel.

We don't even have that shit at our university.

>> No.2969130

>>2969093
Lol, reminds me of when i learned that cyanide supposedly tastes like bitter almonds.
I'm going, wait, did someone somewhere relay what it tasted like right as he killed himself?

>> No.2969147

common P-chem undergraduate lab involves various organometallic reagents and their precursor organic materials... manganese, Rhodium and Iridium are common metals.


some of the compounds of these materials (depending on the oxidation state) can be carcinogenic or teratogenic.
i distilled acetaldehyde once. it was extremely smelly and the smell eventually made me sick (even with a hood).

I accidentally got a small amount of N-vinylpyrrolidone on my skin (like 1 drop).

I got c60 on my skin (dissolved in toluene).

probably stuff thats worse than all this but I cant remember.

>> No.2969153

>>2969108


you must go to a pretty weak university then. HF is a common chemical. its used literally all the fucking time, even in synthesis.

its used to deprotect silanes in oranic chemistry.

anyone who does anything at all with Si has it on tap (literally)... so check your physics, engineering, and chem departments for people making shit with Si.

>> No.2969182

Pure Bromine is pretty nasty, and I've made 50% NaOH solutions. Aqua Regia is nasty as well.

Nothing strikes me as really scary though. I was fairly intimidated when I was new to handling bromine because of what I knew would happen if it got on my skin, though.

>> No.2969202

>>2969153
>its used literally all the fucking time
>literally
so there is literally never a point in time at which HF is not being used faggot?

>> No.2969206

Silane used to deposit thin films of Si... That shit spontaneously combusts in a normal atmosphere. And as a consequence of working with silane I also work with HF to clean the vacuum chambers...

>> No.2969216

I once handled a tube of dihydrogenmonoxide (100%.. insanity) back in my working days

shit got in my system, fucked me up good.

>> No.2969218

Gasoline. I have no idea how such a scary chemical became so commonplace.

>> No.2969221

Hg

Cool as fuck, but scared shitless for my nervous system

>> No.2969230

>>2969221
Back in the doctors office my mom works at (before it was bought out and put under new management) wouldn't even call Hazmat when they dropped a mercury thermometer. My mom has swept up mercury plenty of times already with just a broom and dustpan and thinks it's just stupid to call hazmat over something like that.

>> No.2969236

mixed draino and aluminum together expecting hydrogen. took a couple deep, deep breaths and discovered it was ammonia.

>> No.2969249

>>2969216
That shit kills more people than any other chemical... generally via asphyxiation... don't know why they don't ban that chemical!

>> No.2969264

Nothing really lethal but I threw some pure potassium in a pool that my sister was in and watched her freak out.

It was a long time ago and I don't know where the fuck my dad got pure potassium.

>> No.2969290

Oh boy... let's see...

HgCl2
Hydrofluoric Acid
Sufentanil citrate API (pure shit in powder form before it winds up in pills... will fuck you up if inhaled)
An experimental cancer drug the name of which escapes me... had to wear SCBA
Tetrodotoxin, the real shit... you can order it from Sigma
Pure liquid Propofol API, the microemulsion machine broke and we wound up breathing in a bit of it... both the guy with me and myself had to spend about 30 minutes chilling in the conference room before we felt okay.

That's it I guess. I sorta pride myself on having worked with some of the more INSANELY dangerous chemicals. Oh, the joys of pharmaceutical dosage research.

>> No.2969310

We had to use some glacial acetic acid in a lab once. Our professor gave us some latex gloves and told not to spill any. Then I broke the flask that had it and some sulfuric acid in it. I was scared shitless

>> No.2969397
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2969397

HCL......

>> No.2969406

>>2969249
http://www.dhmo.org/dihydrogen-monoxide/

>> No.2969450
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2969450

various platinum chemo drugs
various genetically modified viruses we use in our lab
etbr

um in a ochem lab in undergrad we were staining TLC thingies with iodine vapor after heating iodine pellets
i overheated my little container thing and when i opened it to put my TLC thing in it this huge cloud of purple smoke came roiling out and got all over my hand and arm...stained some of my skin black for a while lol

>mfw the sacrifices we make for science

>> No.2969495

>>2969264

haha oh shit

exploding like fuck

>> No.2969557

>>2969450
Damn straight! We all make sacrifices for science. Who knows if the lactophenol cotton blue will give me neuropathy? Who knows what hazards I endured in O-Chem lab?

We're men of science, the risk is worth the reward!

>> No.2969580

I know potency =/= danger but for me it would probably be 25C-NBOMe

>> No.2969589

>>2968984
I have a jar of home made nitroglycerin around here somewhere.
That count?

>> No.2969597

Oh and just out of curiosity, how dangerous would handling hydrazine be?

>> No.2969603

12 moles/L hydrochloric acid

i'm only 1st year.....so we don't deal with the hot stuff yet.

>> No.2969608

osmium tetroxide

>> No.2969628

caustic soda solution

unnoticeable when vapour settles on you. slight tingling sensation after a while then skin begins to slop off like soggy cardboard.

wasn't scared because there's nothing to fear but fear itself. lol jks i cried the entire time.

>> No.2969650

I dont really remember what was, but some time ago, in a chem lab practice(university, math degree) we where fooling around with the chemicals that we had in the lab, nothing really stupid, just reading the labels and in some cases opening the lids. Then, as I was about to open one a friend of mine screams "stop, look at the label" and there it was, the code for "cancer by inhalation".

I realize that it was not as extreme as some things in this thread, but it scared me shitless.

>> No.2969658

>>2969650
Also, needless to say, I stooped right there and forever the "just smell and taste everything" approach and just did what we were asked to.