Lab Fires and Sub-Zero Safety

[@That_Chemist]

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[@Volvith]

Our highschool chemistry teacher gave us a plumbing lesson about WW1 chemical weapons. And i quote: _"If any of you thinks it is a good idea to pour random chemicals down the drain, ask you history teacher what the French thought of chemical weapons back during the Great War, because every sink is connected to the same pipe, and random chemicals results in random death gas. And if the gas doesn't kill you, i will."_ ... Never really did anything with chemistry in my life, but that stuck. For reference, our history teacher was a bit of a WW1 nut and knew pretty much everything. We did ask. *_We were scared._*

[@andrewkelley9405]

What did he think of Fritz Häber?

[@8bits59]

@@andrewkelley9405 oh boy, chemistry's most loaded question

[@bytefu]

My lab has excellent Sub-Zero safety. That's because my lab is anywhere outside the building, and Mortal Kombat characters are not real.

[@That_Chemist]

😂

[@Biggerman159]

​@@That_Chemistpin this lmao

[@Biggerman159]

@@soundspark oh yea, and ur right atlas VPN is reallllly sketchy

[@Biggerman159]

@@soundspark yea

[@Biggerman159]

@@soundspark *coughs in temu*

[@sovereigncervine4125]

Environmental scientist here. When I heard "carrot family" I immediately said "oh no." Before college I spent time at a biological laboratory doing a several week field ecology course, in a region where cow parsnip (a native relative of giant hogweed) is fairly common, and shares the phototoxins. For god knows what reason, the scientists I was working with did not tell me this. I was spending a lot of time in the region collecting samples to study the seed dispersal mechanisms of different biomes, and some meadows and fields were absolutely packed with cow parsnip. Somehow I managed to come out of that unscathed. I didnt find out about the phototoxins until I was doing additional research online for my project afterwards.

[@markatonc]

when I had my IT apprenticeship in local town hall, a cleaning lady once tried to be nice and clean up spilled toner... when the vacuum turned into a flamethrower, it agitated the toner on the floor which ignited too. fortunately nothing else caught fire and the floor was tiled, so only thing lost was the vacuum and probably few years of the lady's life from the fear she felt. The silliest thing was that we actually left it in there on purpose while we went to get the special vacuum for flammable substances, so it was kinda out bad that we didn't leave any note or anything to leave it be until we are back.

[@Dommifax]

The icendiary vacuum cleaner is a classic. When my parents renovated our house after buying it they also had a vacuum filled with dust and sawdust start a slow fire inside, which wasn't instantly noticeable and which burnt the wooden part of the floor it was standing on over night; fortunately nothing else burned down after the wood had been burned through, but the whole second and third floor had to be cleaned because of the smoke.

[@alexia3552]

note to self yikes

[@DEATHBYFIRE09]

I can confirm about toners flammability and the general nastiness of it - I've got it on my hands more than a few times as I work at a printing firm, and if it gets on your clothes, you can forget about getting that stain out. As for the flammability, we had a new hire who decided that the best way to dispose of a leaky tube of toner was to just dump it straight into our paper recycling bin. Its already on the paper, he must have assumed, so it should be fine to go in there! Now, this would have probably been fine, though probably would have got us shouted at by the company that takes our recycling, had he not also had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth at the same time. While I'm working inside, I hear a nice FWOOMP, and rush outside with a coworker. There we find our new hire, who was missing his eyebrows, staring wide eyed at the now smouldering dumpster full of paper. Thats how I got to spend half an hour organising a bucket chain to keep the fire under control until the fire brigade showed up to give that bin the most thorough cleaning its ever received.

[@mute1085]

Hogweed is no joke as well, I know several cases of children going blind after playing with it in a shade and getting some sap droplets in their eyes.

[@sciloj]

Some dermatovenerologists get really puzzled by men displaying similar symptoms on their hands and genitalia after doing some uneducated weed control work and running into this plant. It's pretty common invasive in several former USSR countries and yet, people often don't recognize it and don't know about the harm it causes.

[@official-obama]

@@sciloj hogweed came into contact with genitalia? huh?

[@Lemon_Sage9999]

Back in my freshman year of highschool, I was in a class for metal and glass arts. We used Gold Cyanide and Nickel Sulfate solutions on a 40⁰C hot plate, and we handled those with no PPE whatsoever. I remember how sweet they both smelled and thought the nickel having a sweet smell was weird. Looking back, that was probably a big dummy stupid mistake. I have other stories for "tales from the trip" that also explain my mild neurological issues like eye twitch

[@theRPGmaster]

Tales from the trip... Wow, I'd love to hear those stories. I only have boring ones, exposure to fine powders, chloramines, sulfur dioxide, burning magnesium. Not healthy, but nothing really noteworthy.

[@drrocketman7794]

My firefighting experience in real life involved a mop, saturated with floor wax stripper. A few weeks sitting outside in Arizona heat caused it to catch fire, and as it was leaning against the building when it burned, it set off the smoke alarm and I investigated, thinking it was a false alarm. I saw it and RAN and got an ABC fire extinguisher and put it out, then dragged it away from the building and stomped it until it quit smoldering. I used the ENTIRE fire extinguisher.

[@whoever6458]

One of my favorite lab professors had a slow reaction that he got impatient with and went to the pub because he thought it hadn't worked. When he came back, turns out that his reaction burnt the whole lab building down but this was back in the day when that sort of thing would still let you get a PhD instead of a lengthy incarceration.

[@sled_neckx9972]

My advice for any work situation is to please wear proper PPE for your work environment and be very careful around pressurized and/or hot liquids. Now for my story. I am a small engine mechanic, and I was once working on my snowmobile and was really confused because the radiator was cold, but the engine was overheating. I thought that the cooling system had air trapped in it. Without thinking I opened the bleeder valve and boiling hot coolant shot me in the face. At least I thought to dip my face in the snow bank. Overall my face was scalded and hurt for awhile, but I feel it could have been worse. Unrelated to the snowmobile incident, but leather gloves protected me from a grinder the other day. I slipped while cutting a pipe, and left a large gash in two fingers on my leather glove, but my hand was unscathed. Note: all it takes is one screw up to cut your fingers off. I will never grind without leather gloves again.

[@yinbaro]

9:52 If you told me that this is a clip from an Explosions&Fire video I would have totally believed you and would've pictured in my head Tom's classic off-camera "wooooah" reaction. Only Dr. Tom would come up with something as insanely dangerous as mixing solid ammonia with bleach in an open environment

[@word6344]

Or James Cambell, featured in Tom's chloramine vid for making the stuff in glass vases and having sunlight detonate it, sending shrapnel everywhere (including in Cambell)

[@faefaefaefox2613]

Once during a squid dissection lab in middle school. A class clown like kid cut off, and ate a piece of the formaldehyde soaked squid, this instantly shut down the lab. And had an ambulance called to the school to probably get this kids stomach pumped (he did this for the promise of 100 bulk fidget spinners)

[@petersmythe6462]

"I could tell it was in the carrot family" This alone would ensure I would never touch it unless I knew that it was a domestic carrot. Too likely you'll get some massively phototoxic hogweed or it'll be hemlock.

[@NM-wd7kx]

Having seen hogweed in the wild, I assure you that you'll know it when you see it. The stuff looks dangerous, like the plant version of a slasher film killer

[@Gamesaucer]

@@NM-wd7kx There are multiple varieties of hogweed. The one I assume you're talking about is the giant hogweed, which you'll definitely know when you see it, because it's likely to be taller than you are. But that doesn't prevent you from overlooking smaller types of hogweed, or even a young giant hogweed. Plus they're not in bloom all the time. Do you know what they look like when they're not blooming? I've seen multiple kinds of hogweed in the wild that are in bloom, but I'm not sure I'd be able to recognise them otherwise.

[@Joghurt2499]

Oh god the hemlock one. Oh no. I knew as soon as they said "carrot-like flowers". We don't have that many really chemically ouch-y plants here (besides stinging nettles but those are okay) and poison hemlocks so I immediately recognise those two wherever I go. My dear friends in the landscaping biz tell of horrible stories but I've somehow been able to avoid them. It does not sound pleasant.

[@aronderksen7055]

My father used to work in the oilfield back in the 70’s when it was still pretty much the Wild West. One of the jobs on a drilling rig was to maintain the proper pH of the drillers mud(the fluid used to wash up all the material that is drilled away). It had to be slightly basic so they would add large amounts of sodium hydroxide to the solution. This was usually first dissolved into a barrel of cold water and then added to the mud tank. This one guy though was too impatient to wait for it to dissolve in the cold water so he decided he would use hot water instead. Since it was the middle of winter in Canada they had a steam boiler to thaw equipment out. So this guy fills this 55 gallon drum with near boiling water and dumps an entire 50lb bag of sodium hydroxide in. Since the reaction was exothermic it boiled almost immediately. This cover the worker with a boiling mixture of sodium hydroxide. From what I heard his face received permanent and severe damage. Or how my dad put it “burnt his face off”.

[@douglas2977]

Nothing too terrible from my years of school chemistry, but a few smaller incidents. Once, just before a fellow student was in the process lighting off a bunsen burner, we were called away to the room next door. They already had opened the gas valve, but not lit the flame. We returned a few minutes later, and were hit by the garlic smell. We went like "yeah, we should better air out the room first." There was also a fist-sized crater in one of the wooden tables, which I was told was related to "something with alkaline metals". In another school, we did the classic of potassium in water again. Second round, it was a student's turn to drop a large chunk of the metal (without tweezers or gloves, just wet with the parrafin) into the water. After a slight delay, it exploded, splashing the solution everywhere. I visited the school a few years later, there was still potassium salt residue in the lamp shade above the teachers table. In the same school, we also had someone spill an entire bottle of formic acid for ester synthesis by knocking it over with the glass pipette onto their trousers. They only wanted to undress after it started to burn a little. It was washed off, and afaik nothing beyond temporary skin redness occured.

[@NER0IDE]

During my undergrad days, someone in our department was researching methanethiol (the compound that is mixed with natural gas to be able to smell it). The had a flask with concentrated methanethiol which they covered and left out of the fume hood, before leaving for a break. After some time, the whole building had a faint smell of natural gas. The building was evacuated by emergency services due to a suspected gas leak. After several hours of looking for said leak, they tracked it down to the researcher's lab and found the flask. Also, roughly around that time, the biology department next door decided to reintroduce an extinct species of bird to the region. As winter came, the birds found refuge in the warm air vents of the chemistry department. Dozens of birds died in the vents. I feel sorry for whoever had to clean that up.

[@panqueque445]

You know you fucked up when you call a specialist and the first thing they do is take a picture for a seminar.

[@lagggoat7170]

As soon as I heard "In the carrot family" I was thinking No No No. Granted, I was thinking Giant Hogweed, not poison hemlock, but still, those plants can ruin your day.

[@davidg4288]

We have something here in Northern Ohio that looks like Giant Hogweed but it isn't. It's called Cow Parsnip and it's a native plant so the park rangers let it be. It's not majorly nasty like Hogweed but it is an irritant at least to some people so I leave it the heck alone. Also I don't trust myself to tell it from invasive Giant Hogweed, which can ruin more than your day.

[@lagggoat7170]

@@davidg4288 Apiaceae has many members that look INCREDIBLY alike, which only adds to the pain in your butt status. Sometimes you might be ok handling a plant that looks like this, sometimes you arent. I had plant ID in uni and wouldnt trust myself to ID them reliably

[@S3lkie-Gutz]

The carrot family really chose violence didn't they

[@peggedyourdad9560]

@@S3lkie-GutzAnd then you have Queen Anne’s Lace, which is perfectly harmless and even edible (if you aren’t allergic to it).

[@charliecox13]

I’m way more scared of poison hemlock than I am hogweed

[@amberdent651]

So I'm training to become a 9-1-1 dispatcher, and we have to go through mandatory hazmat training, obviously. One of the videos they show you is of an Illinois cop responding to a rural vehicle crash with a trailer. When he pulls up to the scene, he sees one of the drivers on the ground and a white tank leaking white gas. I guess not realizing it was a hazmat call, he runs into the cloud of gas to try and save the driver, but within about two breaths gets overcome and passes out. By the time fire and EMS get there, the cop is completely unconscious and only agonally breathing. Dude dies, along with both drivers. The gas? Anhydrous ammonia. Had the placard on the tank and everything.

[@michaireneuszjakubowski5289]

The fire toner fire thing reminded me of something that happened close to me (like, literally in the block I live in) a couple months ago. So, an old lady was sleeping under a pile of blankets, warming her room with a candle (because we're all characters in an Andersen story apparently), only she decided to rest it against a bottle of starch-based dry shampoo. From what the cops told me later, the official story is that the propane propellant burst and ignited first, spreading the (also flammable) shampoo all over the room and igniting it in turn, making a poor man's thermobaric weapon in the process. Now it's "A candle and A bottle of shampoo" we're talking about here, how bad could it be? Windows blown around 10 m from both sides, trashing a car on one. The lady's only lived because of the pile of blankets, as the inside of her room had basically all turned into shrapnel. I can actually attest to the power here; the explosion was so violent the whole neighborhood shook, which, weirdly enough, isn't that unexpected at circa 4 AM where I live (unexploded ordnance, and those are the best hours to dispose of it). It even made the national news, for what it's worth (then again, blowing up your house with SHAMPOO is kinda newsworthy).

[@gingermcgingin4106]

One hell of a way to wake yourself up in the morning

[@CompletelyNormal]

This chempilation has a dangerously high concentration of "yikes".

[@oan1249]

i am pleasantly surprised to find a person that sets the volume of the ad actually lower than the vid

[@That_Chemist]

usually they are recorded separately so there is always a slight chance that the volume level will change

[@rzpogi]

My basic Chem Teacher reminded us to always bring our PPE and necessary materials required for lab class by mentioning a story that came from the Biology Department. There was this Biology class that was supposed to examine sperm under the microscope. A student was assigned to get horse sperm from the next door facility. However this student forgot to get the horse sperm from next door. The class schedule does not match the time it is available to get the horse sperm. Since this is the only scheduled time to examine sperm, the guy responsible did what he has do and the class examined his sperm.

[@hoggif]

I've whoomped too! As a student I had a bunch of test tubes to clean up and I was in a bit of hurry. So, I emptied them all to the sink with running water in single batch. First I noticed some vapors (warm water and solvens), then a tiny metallic bit hissing and moving around the surface. Then whoom. Yap, forgot a piece of sodium unreacted in one tube. Nothing bad happened but I learned the lesson, if not about safety, at least that trying to get "no it wasn't me" -look in lab does not work when heads turn around and you're the only one near where it whoomped.

[@LemurG]

I legit asked about more chempilations on your community post poll and you posted one so soon after. One might say I can predict the future

[@That_Chemist]

there should be another one in the next 10 days or so

[@lexinwonderland5741]

I AM SO GLAD YOU STILL POST CHEMPILATIONS!! I would be a patron if I weren't piss poor but hey I am so grateful for the bonus posts (and your illustration of Reaxys is always fantastic, you do a wonderful job for their sponsorship and next uni I work at will hear about it to no end) Love, PerFluoroCubane Crystals girl

[@ILOVECALGARY2024]

I once found 5 lb of ammonia nitrate underneath a lamp that was making a constant Spark in my school's Janitor's Closet not even in the explosives containment box grade 7 by the way

[@That_Chemist]

☠️

[@ichaukan]

Aaah, the toner story reminds me of one of the worst jobs I ever had working for a company that did overnight cleaning for offices and the sort. I remember getting yelled at one day because I didn't vacuum up a toner spill and I just laughed in the guy's face.

[@craigpater6278]

I have a story about fire safety in high school chemistry labs. Normally we would dump the leftover chemicals down a specially designed chemical waste drain designed for that purpose. But with one experiment the liquid chemical residue leftover from the experiment is explosive so the chemistry teacher made it very clear that we were absolutely not under any circumstances to dump the explosive liquid chemical residue down the chemical waste drain due to it being explosive. Guess what someone did ? They dumped explosive liquid chemical residue down a sink after the chemistry teacher specifically told us not to do that. Fortunately that didn't cause an explosion in the chemistry lab, but it could easily have caused an explosion just very lucky that it didn't.

[@zetsubouda]

Just to clarify my father worked specifically at a very large plastics and pigments company. Powdered plastics (and dyes as was shown) are both dangerous and you shouldn't be around them without the correct PPE.

[@circeciernova1712]

Vacuum cleaners and IT do not mix. Even if the toner hadn't exploded, you would still have a cloud of aerosolized toxic junk. See, a normal vacuum cleaner sends lots of air into the collection bag along with the unwanted detritus it collects. The bag has pores in its surface, designed to allow air to escape so that the bag doesn't just fill up with air. Well, the powdered toner is so fine that it can also fit through those pores, and instead of collecting it the vacuum cleaner just acts to create a cloud of toner - one you could easily inhale! Also, I have a grudge over an idiot roommate who refused to listen when I said NOT to run a vacuum over my PC. Even when I cleaned the area and the PC itself, she refused to stop vacuuming right up along the PC "just in case there's any dust you didn't get" (she had a complex about everything needed to be clean and everything in the house having to be the way SHE liked it, screw the rest of us). Over time, this fried the USB ports on the board so they only work some of the time, as well as damaging a couple peripherals. So, don't ever run a vacuum cleaner over a PC, especially over open ports! The difference in electrical potential creates enough of a static charge to SERIOUSLY mess up electronics, particularly the 1v lines!

[@jacobcomongore4180]

We recently had a fire at my lab in a flammable waste carboy. Turns out some one had been mixing acids in the flammable waste stream, we tested and got a pH of 2. We’re just happy no one got hurt.

[@PaulSteMarie]

Toner fire! Yikes! They do make special vacuums for toner with filters to capture the particles. Regular vacuums will suck up the toner and spew it right back out the exhaust.

[@davidg4288]

This was observed at work when the toner vacuum filled up to quickly and the techs used a shop vac. It made a big mess in the hallway. Toner is basically plastic dust with black pigment, I never knew it was toxic but I did know the fine dust was likely to be an inhalation hazard.

[@NCVluminati]

I have a little story about calcium hypochlorite tablet's. So one day i was taking calcium hypochlorite out of its container, while doing this i accidentally caught a BIG whiff of the white powder. My nose throat and lungs started hurting and I was coughing nonstop. 3 weeks later and my nose is still hurting and my throat feels like hell every morning. After probably 1-2 months it cleared out. After that I always hold my breath when im dealing with calcium hypochlorite tablet's.

[@That_Chemist]

Why are there so many stories like this

[@NCVluminati]

@@That_Chemist probably because chlorine stuff is very common in households

[@petersmythe6462]

This is one thing I'm annoyed at. Many dangerous cleaners like Drano do not tell you what percentage of their active ingredients they have and the ordering of those ingredients in the list varies. Is Drano mostly Lye with some bleach in it or is it mostly bleach with some lye in it? If you mix it with an acid does it get neutraluzed or fill your bathroom or kitchen with vast amounts of chlorine gas or both? The package does not tell you. It just says it contains Sodium Hydroxide and Sodium Hypochlorite and other things. You're left to guess at the molarity of any given ingredient.

[@cloud_congestus]

oh this reminds me where once i was doing the carbon worms experiment in school (put baking soda & sugar on some sand in an evaporating dish, methylene spirit on the sand + baking soda and sugar, light it on fire) and someone must have tried adding methylene spirit while the stuff was burning because they managed to light a bottle of methylene spirit on fire. I vividly remember the teacher carrying a half melted, burning bottle of it to a sink in tongs. ...I proceeded to do nearly the exact same thing not even 2 minutes later. Luckily, for me only whatever residue was on the tip of the dropper burned, partially melting it shut.

[@aquaralahermanni4892]

In our first year of lab technician training we did several titrations. One was to determine the concentration of Ca in egg shells we collected at home. We needed to solve them in Hydrochloric acid for that but according to our teacher this wasn't going fast enough (or as fast as she thought it would go). The big container of Hydrochloric acid was placed under one of our 6 fume hoods but we took beakers full of it to our benches. And that's also where we cooked the Hydrochloric acid/eggshell mixture. The Hydrochloric acid was already at a quiet high concentration to begin with and and it didn't take long until the room filled with HCl. According to the IT-students in the building across from our lab it looked quite funny when the complete window front was suddenly filled with coat and goggle wearing people halfway hanging out of said windows, desperately trying to vent some fresh air into their lungs. Our teacher was actually surprised this had happened and ordered us to put glas lids on the beakers. When I told her this wouldn't solve the problem since it was fucking gas and you can't seal the beakers this way she scolded me for suggesting to seal a system under heat and pressure air tight. Needles to say, the results of the titrations were useless and we had to write a report on what went wrong and how to improve the experiment for following classes.

[@ares395]

Reminds me when the copier machine at our uni made, for some reason, shitty copies and you could just rub the text off. Couple mates and I would rub off some exercises and piss each other off. I knew that toner is carcinogenic so I made sure to keep my hands away from my face but still, that was very dumb. Other than that I don't think I have any dumb stories like that... well, maybe aside from the piece of a burned sparkler that fell off (matchhead sized) that I tried to pick up with my bare fingers and immediately regretted it (I was a kid). Fun fact, these things are so hot that they get stuck into your skin so you flinging your hand like a madman does nothing, it just stays there and keeps burning you. A lot of cold water and a few years later and I somehow don't even have a scar. I feel like a lot of people learn at some point that things may not look like it but are in reality hot af (ever tried to cut something with a grinder and then picked that part up?).

[@dr-amethyst-77]

lurking future geologist here, enjoying the chemistry stories (you’ve never lived until you’ve licked a rock)

[@attilapeter2470]

I'm still in highschool, so I don't have many crazy stories, besides that one time, during biology class, we were doing some basic experiments, I think it was bromine in water we were handling, the teacher warned us not to spill it, it's sort of dangerous and sticks to your skin, nothing terrible. Anyways, me with my hands steady as a surgeon, as the only guy who took extra chem, or whatever that's called where you are, so I was handling things, because of course I know what I'm doing, and of course, when I grab the only chemical not perfectly safe on human skin, I drop it in my lap. Because why do things above the plastic tray provided, when you can move it away from the desk, away from the tray, and spill it on yourself. Another girl who took AP chem managed to spill lugol (KI/I, we used it to show Vitamin C content in a solution), on the white plastic table, again, tray was provided, and not used, because it has been a week since we last got told every single step of lab safety, who remembers that stuff after a week. Next week we're doing experiments with nitric acid for biology class, I'll update this if I spill it and remember to update this.

[@camj4631]

I have to say - the most dangerous time i have ever been in a lab is cleaning legacy chemicals

[@VegardAndreassen-r7t]

I haven’t studied chemistry, however for science class in middle-school, we would occasionally do experiments. And more-often than not, ≈13 year old students don’t follow propper procedure. The experiment I remember the best was HCL + Zn > H + ZnCl2 We would mix the two in a glass jar, seal it off, and connect it to a tube that would export the H gas to a different jar. One lit match, and poof! Lots of fun. Well, a girl in my class thought this wasn’t exciting enough. She wanted more H gas, and faster. So she filled a large test tube with about 150ml HCL (or about 120ml more than we were supposed to use) and a handfull of Zn. She then quickly sealed it off completely and proceeded to vigorously shake the tube. To no-one’s surprise, it exploded, spraying HCL all over her face, and onto the body of the 5 students closest. Thankfully, we had a level headed (although not the most attentive or cautious) teacher that got her to the sink in a hurry. Except for our protagonist having to wear eyepatches for well over a week, no harm was done. No chemical burns, no nothing

[@jeffchandler6285]

If one is gently paranoid that an out match is capable of setting your trash alight, a few things can be done 1 soaking match through in water from sink if paranoia persist soak through toss match down drain followed by more water fire hazard done.

[@nikkiofthevalley]

You shouldn't toss matches down the drain in the first place. Wait a couple minutes for them to cool off, throw in garbage.

[@jeffchandler6285]

@@nikkiofthevalley true impatient souls barely like waiting for things to cool

[@QuackingGoose314]

This story was in year 7, we were doing an experiment to measure the temperature of different parts of the flame and to see that the middle part was colder than the tip. After a few weeks, a rumour had spread that somebody stuck a thermometer in the flame which exploded, getting 3 detentions in the process

[@SeraphinaPZ]

I find these videos fascinating, and also they remind me I am not cut out for chemistry. Not just because colorblindness is an impediment, but there is an endless variety of things involved that would make me evacuate a room.

[@jlp1528]

Ordinary vacuum cleaners are intended for regular maintenance cleaning of homes, not sucking up a whole bunch of flammable material all at once. When in doubt, be extremely careful with flammable materials in dust form, because chances are they can explode.

[@bazooka93]

Giant hogweed is common enough in Central and Eastern Europe we were warned of it as little children. Made nettles sound tame. The nastiest thing about it, on a proper hot day the furanecoumarins from it can evaporate and merely standing beside the plant can affect you. Not only being dangerous it's highly invasive and difficult to keep under control. It's often called Stalin's revenge, as there were attempts to use it as a cheap crop for feeding farm animals in late 1940s and early 1950s. That did not go well.

[@boltae]

chemistry is so silly and funny! if silly means dangerous and funny means dangerous.

[@drrocketman7794]

Also had a shriek and a column of blue and orange flame go past my ear while brazing a gas tank. (You fill it with water first, then you braze it, i.e. solder it but with brass) The water had dribbled out of the tank and the torch flame went over the fill opening and *WHEEEEP* one of the loudest sounds I've ever heard assaulted my left ear!

[@twocvbloke]

Now I'm done wiping up the tears of laughter from the comments on my pool story, here's my "accidental chemistry" moment - 2013, we'd just moved into this house, August was rather hot here in the UK that year, my almost ending up in hospital from heatstroke from moving heavy things about movinginto the new house, and of course people's wheelie bins (garbage cans for you lot across the pond) were getting a bit ripe in the summer heat, our "new" one (which came with the house) in particular smelled like something had crawled in and died in there from another neighbour being a bit naughty and using it for their own waste, so, as I had a load of ammonia-based household cleaner left over from cleaning our previous house after moving out fully, I proceeded to glug it down the sides of said bin and left it, sorted, no incidents, the thing smelled much better after that... 2014, my uncle had moved in next door, and his chest freezer was a cryogenic biohazard of a disaster zone which I'd ever so kindly cleaned out for him, my forgetting that the regular waste bins weren't emptied 'til the week after next, and as his bins were full from house moving waste, I'd thrown some of the forgotten, years-old expired meat into our bin that I'd extricated from that imitation Everest dead-zone... Cue warm temperatures, again, and the bin reeking of something having died in there, again; after it was finally emptied it was still full of flies and their maggots and smelling vomit-inducingly awful, so deciding to clean it out, I poured in some water with some dish soap added to it, with the idea to use an old broom to scrub it out thoroughly, and then proceeded to throw in some cheap bleach (the thin sodium hypochlorite type) to sanitise it too, but guess what dumdum here forgot about having done the previous year!! Yep......... Not long after the bleach hit the water, up rose a white cloud from the depths of that rancid recepticle, I shot backwards at about the speed of Warp 9.975 and hit the closed door of the house with a hard thud knowing full well what that cloud was, I thankfully was about 15ft away by the time it all billowed out, but I still had caught a good whiff of the gas I'd produced, like the worst possible "peed in a toilet being soaked with bleach" sort of smell, but much worse with the added scent of decomposed pig parts, it wasn't enough to cause the lung-burning, eye-watering, hours-long coughing experiences others have recounted, thankfully, due to my reaction to the, er, reaction. The cloud of much evil then wafted lazily up this terraced street away from the houses, like some sort of ghost having been freed from being trapped in a cursed tomb, thankfully though the immediate neighbours weren't in that afternoon, otherwise I may have committed an act of trench warfare!!! Goodness knows what others further up the street thought though, oops... :S

[@mcblaggart8565]

Ugh. I don't like poison hemlock or anything similar. For the obvious reasons, but also because they look horribly like the local bur plants that I rip out by reflex. Those plants could screw me up *so* bad.

[@randomprotag9329]

I can understand why someone would think to put diethyl ether down at sink but why was a match going down the sink at all (even if it was completely safe match). usually in labs there are separate disposal for liquid and powder chemical and equipment like matches, pipette tips or broken glass (usually from a beaker).

[@Flesh_Wizard]

9:50 WE MAKING IT INTO THE LUNGS WITH THIS ONE 🔥🔥🔥

[@rishithegray9559]

These videos give me nightmares please keep making them

[@aqdrobert]

Remember, kids, if sulfur hexafluoride makes your voice really low... tungsten hexafluoride may be heavier, but you won't live long enough to film the internet challenge.

[@That_Chemist]

other options include: xenon, perfluorobutane

[@aqdrobert]

@@That_Chemist I prefer oxygen. I let the Darwin Award seekers use other gases.

[@ianthompson2802]

The toner story reminded me of some complacency at my shop we had a guy lets call him "jist" who left his old shop for us his old shop lets call "stuff share" well stuff share uses non flamable break parts cleaner jist was using a oxy torch to heat up a pin jist was used stuff share and non-flammable brakeparts cleaner so he sprayed alot down to try to clear the area of grease. Jist did not know our brakeclean seems to have no solvency power so he used about 2 sprayer cans measuring 32 oz each hevsprayed 2 cans to get the area"cleared' of grease to use the torch well thevarea was not cleared very well his eyebrows decided to take a 4 week vacation and the machine was awrite off as it caught the grease thr grease dripped to a fuelleak causing a tubeline to go then wick up to the fueltank. Shop survived everyone else was fine but jist eyebrows were burnt and his pride was hirt

[@jamesphillips2285]

5:20 May be safer to cut off the ear loops first: to make sure nobody accidentally uses the mask later. That substance looks obvious: but my understanding of chemistry is that most things are white powders which may not be immediately obvious.

[@a_Minion_of_Soros]

That nitric acid incident ... Holly shit...

[@BulbasaurLeaves]

Ah, the apiaceae plant family. Some of them are delicious and some of them are extremely poisonous and will burn you on contact. If you see a plant that looks like a carrot or parsley, and it isn't growing in your vegetable garden, steer clear!

[@stdorn]

I had a vacuum cleaner static incident as well. As a brand new biomedical equipment technician fresh out of school I made a stupid mistake which involved launching the contents of an oxygen concentrators molecular sieve up above the drop ceiling. I grabbed a shop vac and started vacuuming up the molecular Civ material which was everywhere. As the small beads started tearing through the corrugated plastic vacuum hose at high speed an Incredibly high voltage charge was building up and I was jumping two and three inch static sparks into things. I still wonder to this day if there's a way to use a semi-closed looped system using a blower moving some sort of beads through plastic tubing as a kind of Van de Graaff type generator.

[@DanielGwimbly-theGwimb-Larson]

I was forced to weedwhack countless giant hogweed plants, 10 feet tall at least, shirtless, on july 3rd on a scorching 100 degree day. Sweat and worked in the sun all day for maybe 6 hours after weedwacking. Gotta love my crazy controlling walking conniption fit of a mother who constantly forced me into situations like that only usually much worse

[@ukeedge2761]

Some face masks have a liquid proof barrier I actually tried it last night with a slightly acidic solution at room temp and nothing would come through

[@jlp1528]

Watching this again and I can't believe I didn't think of the scene in October Sky before. The rocket making kids poured their propellant - potassium chlorate and sugar - down the sink to get rid of it. Same thing happened as with the ether except it was more of a BOOM than a foomp!

[@Volvith]

Sub-Zero Safety? More like Sub Zero-Safety. 😂

[@1marcelfilms]

We once set the lab table on fire after pouring it with ethanol during cleanup time. Lucky no teacher saw it

[@AntimatterBeam8954]

I don't do any chemistry nowadays except using acetone to remove ink off boots lately and making my own laundry powder because allergies to products. I used to be a semi reckless idiot but your chempilations made me wiser. I also don't trust myself to anything reaction wise now because I'm too biologically wrecked from my inborn errors of existence 😂 Thank you for making me wise 🧐 I'm much wiser now 😂

[@bourbonbobo]

I have a phytophotodermatitis scar from going on an adventure in the freshly cut weeds in the garden as a child and touching giant hogweed. The doctors thought it was cigarette burns apparently and gave my parents a hard time 😬 Anyway i don't really remember it but that scar still shows discoloration on my skin when i get cold so definitely did lasting damage haha.

[@catfishtv411]

First. Lets goo another chempilation!!! Edit: also the diethly ether one, instead of pouring it down the drain, of its a really small amount we soak it with paper towels and let it just evaporate out by itself.

[@box420]

I worked has a Machinist makeing air plane and Aerospace parts. Mostly out of Aluminum. However Often times we'd had the machine parts of a phonolic. And the mill are not sealed vary well so you can always smell the phonolic a good 10 feet from the mill. Im gald i dont work there anymore has they didn't care about safty at all.

[@sashboo1370]

Great video as always, but i'm pretty sure the NCl3 guy put solid calcium hypochlorite in conc ammonia or something. This guy had the jankiest setup, I dont think he can freeze ammonia.

[@drrocketman7794]

That ammonia bleach reaction sounds *angry*

[@ochrence]

Not a long story, but once when I was sixteen and hanging out at a friend's house, my friend decided that he was going to go into the woods and burn a vinyl record. Do not ask me why. We were both taking AP Chemistry at the time, yet still managed to be this stupid. It was a pretty damp and cold late winter day, and his Bic lighter took a while to do anything, but when we started seeing smoke and smelling something sweet I got the hell out of there. I very soon learned that in addition to the carcinogenic vinyl chloride I was smelling, burning or melting PVC can also release dioxins, phthalates, and HCl into the air. Fun! He dropped the charred record into a nearby stream (...no words) and also ran away. In the post-exam period of the AP Chem class I was in with this same guy, my teacher prepared four "mystery chemicals" one class for us to (carefully, and in a supervised manner) experiment on in order to identify them. While the teacher was out of the room, my friend decided the most logical course of action would be to combine all four mystery chemicals in the same open container. The mixture instantly started to bubble and produce a foul-smelling gas that resembled something coming out of a puffball mushroom. Again, everyone else immediately got the hell out of the room while my friend managed to cover up his stupid idea by pouring the mixture down the sink and opening the windows. No one told on him and he never got in trouble.

[@amahlaka]

Can someone explain the freezing bleach thing? Does something interesting happen if you try to do that in a household freezer?

[@teknofreak2387]

The ether story was in no way „accidental“. The two guys were like „yea this is gonna be be cool“

[@TheRazgr1z1]

wait, whats wrong with freezing bleach?

[@russlehman2070]

I'm not sure, but my guess would be that you would freeze out water, and it would get concentrated enough to decompose and release chlorine gas.

[@mikemalo6336]

ok, so just tell me so i dont go do it at the local orphanage: why not freeze bleach?

[@gingivitis9148]

Wtf why does bleach kill freezer?

[@Volvith]

10:30 FUMEHOOD IS CONNECTED TO THE VENT SYSTEM AGAIN. WHYYYYY.

[@VACATETHE48]

So seeing someone mixing the bleach and frozen ammonia makes bringing up my dad a necessity. We had a pool in the backyard, and every April (before it's reasonably warm to use the pool), he would always make his mix of bleach and ammonia before dumping it into the pool to kill anything in it. He's an auto mechanic, so he'd always wear a heavy jacket, goggles and thick gloves when making this concoction. He'd always mix it outside and in a giant hefty bucket of unknown composition. It never melted, so I guess it worked. Anyways, several years later when my dad was now living alone with me in a trailer, he went on the back porch to use the charcoal grill. While cooking burgers, he started getting swarmed by hornets, so he ran back inside. Those hornets unfortunately angered the wrong god that day, because my dad responded by making that same bleach and ammonia mixture, locating the hornets nest, and dropping the whole nest into the bucket that was now full of chloramines. We watched from a safe distance and could see the hornets trying to fly away despite literally being dissolved alive. We never had to deal with hornets again for the rest of the time we lived there, but the smell from the mixture did get into the kitchen that was next to the porch and we had to leave the house for a few hours with all of the windows open before the smell went away.

[@VACATETHE48]

After reading this over, I should note that the day we dissolved the hornets nest was NOT the same day we were cooking the food. It was a few months later when the weather was cooler and the hornets would be less active.

[@biohazard6636]

there is an urban legend that one of my great uncles let off an explosive that could apparently be heard from up to over 27km (16.78 miles) away and left a crater with a radius of 10m (32 feet) on a beach. urban legend because no one knows what was used or who did it until it was revealed at his funeral. if I had to make a guess it was a mixture of hydrogen and acetylene as he had a history with playing around with them and would have easy access to them as he was an engineer.

[@Buffalo_Soldier]

6:34 uhmmm at work we cut plastic cable trays with angle grinder cause it's simpler that way. Often in not ventilated place. I guess I will be using sharp knife even if that's more work... and avoid friends that insist on using angle grinder xD

[@Buffalo_Soldier]

Tho, it's made of pcv not phenol... maybe it's not reactive? But also maybe it has chlorine in it so I don't know...

[@vitriolicAmaranth]

I've ended up using facemasks for all kinds of things since they became ubiquitous in 2020. Most recently about a week ago I used one to scoop snowmelt for the back step where I work.

[@Logic44]

One time, while practicing photo processing, I found out the hard way to wear shoes in the "lab" (I was doing it at home with a Paterson tank and Black and White film), I accidentally spilled some dilute Rodinal (RO9 One Shot) on my foot, a very small amount, but I immediately shat bricks and ran to the bathroom, where I dried it up with toilet paper, ran it under the bath faucet, and dried it with a regular cloth towel. As soon as I wiped it away with the paper, I saw an orangeish black spot where it had dropped on my skin, and now, a few years later, it has turned more orange, and I have "freckles" on my foot with a similar color. Not sure what happened biologically speaking, but I should probably get that checked out lmao Ironically, I was wearing gloves. Yes, I am fuckin stupid, thank you for noticing... At least I won't make that mistake ever again!

[@joeylawn36111]

14:44 Stereoisomers? 9:30 UN 3264 = "Corrosive liquid, acidic, inorganic, not otherwise specified" Re: the last joke - A similar joke about Periodic Acid is that it's made from boiling old periodic table posters from chemistry labs....

[@joeylawn36111]

@@chri-k just plain isomers?

[@whoever6458]

Safety videos not being allowed to be played on KZbin. Imagine that! You had one job, KZbin...

[@sadmermaid]

Congrats on sponsor 🎇

[@LukasSMF]

Yay I made it into the video :”)

[@visix8910]

In Italy we can buy hydrofluoric acid in the local shop. This Is becouse its use tò remove rust. But i think i can use much safer HCl. I think i'm gonna make a video to warn the people 😂

[@That_Chemist]

Apparently it’s a thing in North America too - rim cleaner and tile etchant

[@blueangels111]

YESSS THE ROCKETRY CLUB! same thing for me, were trying to get a rocket to space so I'm in charge of making us a propulsion engine. We're using aniline that I made, so we're gonna see what happens lol

[@yeoldebaccyfarm3081]

Dont tell me to not mix bleach and ammonia. I will mix a barrel full of bleach and ammonia and leave it in the sun.

[@stephenjacks8196]

Toner is polystyrene and carbon and iron powder.

[@davidg4288]

Aha! I thought so. So you don't want to inhale that (or eat it I suppose) but it's non-toxic once fused onto paper. Obviously it *is* plastic.

[@stephenjacks8196]

@@davidg4288 the powder reacts with static electricity to migrate everywhere.

[@ShadowKestrel]

is there some rule that videos have to be over 10% sponsor segment or are the sponsors just getting more and more unhinged in the length of scripts they force creators to read? Like I get you want to advertise your product, but a minute and a half of advertising TLS as though that's what a VPN does is utterly mind-numbing

[@douro20]

When I hear that someone has to work with inorganic acid chlorides it makes me cringe a bit...it's also the reason I handle Li-SOCl2 batteries with extreme care.

[@180noscopers1]

Hmm time to wonder how can i avoid these situations

[@whoever6458]

Weird, it says we shouldn't have that giant hogweed here in California, but there must be a related species around here. I will have to go out and examine (carefully!) the species I've seen while tromping right through the wild lands. It must be a related species but I've definitely seem something that looks quite like that.

[@FayeVert]

Likely cow parsnip.

[@brick_ball]

i dont know why this came on my recom but cool video

[@bariumselenided5152]

Wait, why can't you freeze bleach?