They Tried Recycling Chloroform with Phosgene

[@That_Chemist]

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[@ravencrovax]

The guy in the darkroom was lucky. I used to do analogue film development some 25 years ago. If they had done that with developer rather than stop bath, they would be blind. Even less than a drop in the eye will cause the cornea to cloud over and basically develop, leaving you blind or visiually impared.

[@JazzyFizzleDrummers]

I'm guessing specifically color film? CD4 is a problem for sure, but CD2 is used in hair dye sometimes

[@ravencrovax]

@@JazzyFizzleDrummers I did both colour and B&W photography and developing/printing. I remember neither developer was good to get in the eyes. It could be a matter of concentration too. I am not sure how much is used in hair dye, but it could be low enough concentration that it is "considered safe" in hair dye.

[@michaireneuszjakubowski5289]

@@JazzyFizzleDrummers CD3 and CD4 both contain sulfuric acid; I wouldn't want that anywhere near my eyes honestly.

[@Jokke13th]

What chemicals do those solutions contain, apart from sulfuric acid apparently? I'm not well educated in film development as you can tell.

[@ravencrovax]

@@Jokke13th I believe there are currently two major formulas for B&W developing currently as analogue film use has become less and less popular. Kodak D76 is the one I remember using (again, this was 25 years ago so my memory may be a bit fuzzy). Apparently the formula consists of: 2g monomethly-para-aminophenol-hemisulfate (I believe this to be the primary developing agent) 100g sodium sulfite (anhydrous) 5g hydroguinone 2g borax This makes 1l of developer liquid. I am not sure as to the exact mechanism of developing the film based on how those chemicals interact with the film. I just remember that the warning I put in my original post was made very clear to us and was posted on the door of the darkroom we used so we were reminded of it every time we went in.

[@D1GItAL_CVTS]

2017: they did surgery on a grape 2022: they tried reusing chlorophorm with *🅿️hosgene*

[@180noscopers1]

"Make sure your pp has ppe" once again That Chemist slams me over the head with words

[@That_Chemist]

Hahaha

[@SirAndischa]

I want that on a safety poster

[@teilzeitbernd]

Family planning for chemists.

[@BuGBurnout]

I lost it at that part LMAO

[@ARockRaider]

that's called pants.

[@stevengill1736]

An important technique to teach beginners is how to test the odor of even well known materials. One doesn't jam one's nose into the container, one carefully wafts the air near the opening towards the nose with one's hand. If it's done gently, it'll save one from nose burns or possible toxic effects if a container is mislabelled or is particularly corrosive.

[@TheCaptainLulz]

Yeah, phosgene burns. I was a welder in a car parts factory, and sometimes the parts where cleaned with PERC (tetrachloroethylene), sometimes not completely removed. When you weld it, you learn quick how bad that shit sucks. Happened 3 or 4 times before they started demanding a second wash to remove it all.

[@craigpater6278]

@Edward Elizabeth Hitler what's DCM ? Does DCM stand for dichloromethane ?

[@blackbird1234100]

@Edward Elizabeth Hitler DCM is fun. At my old job they had me using it to solvent weld acrylic lenses together. Indoors, no respirator, improper gloves (I didn't wear em because they melted), just goggles. Fuck that

[@ian5395]

Yo This highlights the importance of not only having Eye Wash, but also regularly testing and inspecting. Monthly at the very least for Corp big box stores, I'd think weekly for lab stuffs

[@alan2here]

Safety Idea: Flash freeze button to slow down reactions by freezing everything into a very cold solid.

[@That_Chemist]

Temperature control devices are used in CROs to monitor and control reactions which may be exothermic. For big reactors, they have multiple thermal detectors to detect hot spots

[@skyepyro7104]

Don't burn poison ivy. When I was too young to remember my father tried to clear a patch out with fire, and me and my sister inhaled the smoke and almost required an ER visit.

[@fluor-zc8dq]

The UV- resin story reminded me of my resin- printer experience. My brother who lives in a very small one room flat impulse- bought a resin 3D- printer. He convinced me to let him set it up in my flat, and promised there won't be any mess, and the air filtering system will eliminate most of the fumes. So I agreed. After the first time he used his 3D printer, I just casually touched the table the printer was on, like I had always done long before it was there, and suddenly felt a sticky thing on my fingers. I immediately washed my hands, and cleaned up the table. A day later, the same thing happened again when I removed a spatula he had left outside, and I got a pretty bad allergic reaction. I than removed the printer from my room, flood- lighted the room with an UV- lamp and searched everything with a UV torch to clean up even the last bit of resin. I later set up his printer in my mother's shops storage room, with a plastic table cloth, trays, an Ethanol wash bottle and a dedicated trash can, right besides a window for ventilation. Touching anything on that table without gloves is prohibited. I actually was able to use the printer wearing a gas mask and otherwise full lab PPE.

[@tylisirn]

Yeah. I own a resin printer and I consider the outsides of tools, resin bottles, wash buckets etc. contaminated with resin. Because there *will* be cross contamination because resin never dries or evaporates. I also make sure to cover the table when using it and never set anything on the bare table.

[@richierudolf3410]

Concerning old bottles in chemical storage rooms: I started my PhD in Inorganic Coordination chemistry last year and during that time there was a big cleaning up of old chemicals (bought or synthesised, so you deal with "real" bottle and flasks which hopefully have some labels intact) in our institute. When I started my Bachelor's at this very university a professor of the Inorganic department died and he (with he I mean his pupils) left a lot of chemicals everywhere which were the main target of this cleaning up. And when I mean "everywhere", I mean EVERYWHERE: - 2-3 freezers (these big ones with 2 m height) full of these flasks - every other freezer in the whole institute designated for chemicals had at least 2/3 flasks - the storage facility downstairs had 3/4 packages with up to 10-15 flasks each - ... Until now we're making fun of that by saying that even more flasks will appear, when you get rid of the initial flasks in your cabinat or they will appear from the ceiling if you lift up the ceiling plates. Of course cleaning up s*** of other people is annoying in its own right. But here comes the catch: The professor was working on organometallic compounds, mostly weird Li-organyls, Silanes and P/B/As-compounds (among others there are sealed flasks with condensed gases like AsH3, BH3) which will ignite as soon they see one molecul of H2O or O2. So there you are with hundreds of flasks (not even exaggerating) with absolutely scary shit which will catch fire and most likely poisons you. But the really 'funny' part is that organometallic chemist from the 70s and 80s didn't just make a few 100 mg of their compounds. No, during that time period apparently no one believed your synthesis unless you can synthesise 10 g of that shit at once which makes dealing with that shit even worse. But the best part: Many flasks are soo old that the label is either unreadable or not there anymore. So a recap: - hundreds of flasks containing dangerous compounds (igniting upon contact with air and probably very toxic) - all flasks contain grams (!) of that s*** - for most you can't even read what's in there. The good things is: The chemist who were working on these compounds did a really good job. The compounds are still active as heck. Our designated safety-dude had to clean some flasks and one flask exploded in his hands while cleaning. Fortunately, he wasn't injured besides some cuts in his hand from the flying glass. Since this accident, we are not mandated to get rid of any old chemicals we didn't order or synthesised ourselves.

[@Grizabeebles]

So how does the university safely identify and dispose of all of these organometallic compounds the departed professor left behind?

[@humphreybumblecuck5151]

He just described the process in detail to you. They essentially didn’t bother to identify any of it and left it up to the professors’ successors to deal with.

[@Grizabeebles]

@@humphreybumblecuck5151 -- That much I understand. I'm asking someone to explain *what process* the university is using to identify and safely dispose of all these flasks. Not everyone who watches this channel is a trained chemist. Most of us can get away with just throwing stuff in the trash or dumping it down the sink.

[@RO_Tim]

​@@Grizabeeblesthey aren't using a safe process. A safe process would be to pay a trained professional specialized in that type of cleanup.

[@Grizabeebles]

@@RO_Tim -- Good Lord. So they're a) storing flasks full of random explosive compounds indefinitely. -and- B) disposing of the ones they do find in an irregular and frequently unsafe manner.

[@sharpfang]

I really wonder what sort of stories happen at chemical waste disposal plants, people who handle all the byproducts and failed experiments from a lot of laboratories. Some uranium salts here, some agar with a nasty strain of bacteria there, ancient chloroform, a flask of nitroglycerine that got some students expelled, must be a fun job.

[@LexYeen]

Your channel has given my respect for chemistry a whole new depth, to the point where I just looked up copper octanoate because it's used as gardening fungicide and I wanted to be absolutely sure that I was using the right PPE.

[@That_Chemist]

glad to hear it!

[@LexYeen]

@@That_Chemist Turns out the worst part is the pH, at least in the 0.08% concentration used for gardening. 5.25-6.25. Simple "don't drink it, breathe it, or get it on your skin or in your eyes" precautions are all that's needed. Sure, if you somehow get a blast in the eyes or mouth you should seek medical help after thoroughly cleaning up because copper toxicity is a thing, but for everyday use it's relatively benign.

[@CharlesCoderre-yv1cu]

@@LexYeen such Cu compounds used as fungicides, including the oleate & napthenate are mixed with petroleum oil & emulsified for use as a spray consentrate

[@SilverAceOfSpades]

The orange tweet's follow-up is amazing. Here's the full text. When an article says "some scientists think" then remember this: I, a scientist, once thought I could fit a whole orange in my mouth. I could, it turns out, get it in there, but I hadn't given sufficient thought to the reverse operation. I should also, on reflection, have practiced in private. I had an audience, which grew as my initial satisfaction at an hypothesis well proven, slipped rapidly through stages of qualm, disquiet, then alarm (mild through severe) and ended in full blown panic. When one panics, one's muscles tense, which is of course, the opposite of what I needed here. I had been quite relaxed at the start, but now I couldn't get a finger between the orange and the very taut edges of my mouth. Above and below, the orange, which was now under some pressure, deformed to make a nearly perfect seal against my teeth. I hadn't previously been aware of how much oxygen one needs to consume an orange, but I was made aware of it now by its sudden and ongoing lack. I forgot for a moment that I had nostrils and tried to breathe in hard through my mouth. I have big lungs. When the doctor tested my lung capacity, I blew the end clean off the cardboard tube. I've always been vaguely proud of that; mostly for want of more tangible achievements and because I am, when all is said and done, the kind of person otherwise predisposed to shove a whole orange in his mouth without cause. Those enormous lungs - my pride and joy - expanding in this moment of crisis to their fullest extent, had created a hard vacuum behind the orange, which, at that point imploded. From now on, things which had been unfolding at an almost leisurely pace, started to happen rather fast. So, I will take this opportunity to say that no one had actually tried to help me up till now. This was not for lack of opportunity. Later, someone mentioned the kind of details - veins like worms scribbling incomprehensible messages across my forehead, eyes popping out as if on stalks, laced with tiny red veins - which one can only truly apprehend at a distance that wouldn't have made help impossible. But back to the imploding orange. Although it didn't diminish appreciably in volume upon implosion, the released juice vaporised, turning into a burning acidic cloud that instantly flooded my lungs. My lungs very sensibly responded by collapsing rapidly aided by an involuntary and powerful spasm from my diaphragm. The vapour and oily zest from the orange's skin mixed with mucus scoured from my lungs (that spread flat, we must remember, would cover a tennis court) as well as the last of my residual oxygen, exited now through my rediscovered nostrils as a magnificently abundant yellow foam. And, having a volume in excess of what could easily egress at speed via those narrow tubes, it also squirted out through nearby exits, including around my eyes. Even that wasn't enough and the build up of pressure finally proved too much for the orange, which left my mouth like grapeshot from a cannon, like the superluminal jets generated by matter falling towards a black hole at relativistic speed. When I finally recovered my senses and the cycle of whooping inhalation and coughing fits had exhausted itself, I was greeted not by the concern that I felt such a brush with death merited, but with a disgust that later reflection suggests may not have been wholly unwarranted. Temporarily blind and gasping in my own private world of consequences, I was unaware of the cone of devastation that I had unleashed upon the unluckier segment of my audience, occupying roughly one steradian of solid angle to my front. So, anyway, whenever you read "some scientists think", think about me and recalibrate the lower end of your expectations accordingly. Magnificent writing.

[@196Stefan2]

9:38 This I can confirm: I once ran the last drying process onto a pure pharmaceutical compound, which usually took place in a "drying pistol". The substance is there exposed, onto a small porcellain "weighing-boat", to vacuum in a double-walled glass device over which the warm reflux of constantly distilled Chloroform runs. This process may take one or two days. This Chloroform was quite old, used over and over again and had already a yellowish tint. Unfortunately I forgot to run cooling water through the Dimroth condensor. After some time, there was a slight smell of rotten hay in the lab, which disappered quickly after I opened the water tab. Holding a tissue soaked into Ammonia solution resulted into white fumes of Ammoniachloride at the condensor's outlet. Maybe this was mostly due to HCl vapours, but the smell of Phosgene is quite distinctive. This incident was a quite cause of concern for the head of the lab, because we used Phosgene gas in the same lab, too.

[@Dasycottus]

Another user of Form2s here... Those resins are pretty benign. They'd definitely irritate your skin, but not much more. However, it sounds like she somehow dipped her hands in the tank, which is ~INCREDIBLY~ stupid. If one drop of resin gets over the side of that tank, it'll find its way into the very precise, delicate printer workings and cause absolute hell. Almost all versions of breaking SLA printers start with some object going into the tank. Shoving your hands in a tank is... Bad. (PSA: I only worked with PLA resins. Your resins may be more or less hazardous. Even if it's totally benign, wearing gloves is still for the best)

[@kanetw_]

"PLA" resin is not actually PLA. If you look at the MSDS it's just the usual suspects (various acrylates)

[@dagger7782]

My pathophysiology teacher told us about when he was in his 20s and handling a soil sample without gloves, ends up having his supervisor warning him about how it had some chemical in it that could cause testicular cancer, flash forward another 25 years and now he has a kid known as the 1 nut wonder since the other was removed from testicular cancer. He was a cancer researcher at the time so he was able to identify it before it became a problem, but still a great example of when in doubt, and when not, to always wear ppe

[@That_Chemist]

👀👀👀

[@blip_bloop]

Oh the dark room story reminded me of a story my analogue photography teacher told me many years ago about her own teacher. Apparently back in the day my teacher's teacher brought their dog to class often. As this was on a college campus sometime in the 80s or 90s. This dog had an awful habit of drinking the silver salt baths with apparently no short term consequences. I occasionally wonder what long term health effects that dog had.

[@jannikheidemann3805]

Did it turn blue a bit perhaps?

[@CharlesCoderre-yv1cu]

"silver salt baths" ??? could you mean the fiexer?

[@CharlesCoderre-yv1cu]

fixer, sorry

[@blip_bloop]

@@CharlesCoderre-yv1cu this sounds correct, its been over a decade since I read about the chemistry of photography. 😓

[@MrKittke]

I decided to share some of my stories from high school in a “c-grade highschool” with teachers of the same calliber. This was from when we were around 15. We were doing an experiment with a basic solution made with sodium hydroxide and universal indicator to indicate the pH I’m a clear and colourful way for us kids. Now the plan was to bubble through CO2 from your breath and thus neutralising the solution changing the colour, a fun interactive experiment. Now here comes to troubles first of all the teacher wasn’t to attentive, secondary a lot of not so smart pubescent teens. So first of all almost all of the basic solutions were made way to strong. (According to some friends “they just poured the NaOH into their erlenmeyers”). Still not a problem instead of just wasting product. But now here is the real problem 4 out of 13 students decided to suck on the glass straws instead of blowing into them. After some irritation and teacher who walked in at the right (wrong, he should have stayed in the room) not too much solution was drank. Even tough these 4 students were rushed to the hospital with 2 ambulances. 1 got off without any problems, 1 had painful throat but nothing notable. Now the other 2 had to stay in the hospital for more than a day being forced do drink alot of water and not being allowed to eat anything. On top of that they had to watch out for 1-2 weeks about what they ate. As far as I know they didn’t have any lasting problems but still how this happened is crazy to me. The same inattentive teacher also gave us a glob of mercury “to play with” on the first day of class to get us interested in chemistry, it was fun to play with in our hands but like 🤯🤯, also this was around 2013 mercury wasn’t allowed in classrooms in my country for years. How he still had bottles of it no clue.

[@BrooksMoses]

If I'm remembering correctly, Plastruct's "plastic weld" glue for ABS used to be mostly chloroform with a bit of MEK. I'm pretty sure I've got a 2-oz jar of it from the 1990s around somewhere. I had no idea it might turn hazardous, so thank you for the warning!

[@jpolowin0]

When I was in my late teens, people at a local high school (if I recall correctly) found an old bottle of what had been a solution of picric acid, used for staining proteins. All of the solvent had evaporated, leaving dangerously-explosive crystals of picric acid. It had to be removed by trained personnel. That prompted all of the other schools to check if they had the same problem. I don't *think* any explosions occurred, but it was good that all of the old chemical bottles were checked. Many schools found bottles that were unlabelled -- some didn't seem to have ever been labelled in the first place, while others' labels had fallen off or faded with time so that they were illegible. All had to go, and had to be treated as though they were dangerous. Presumably, over the years, people had seen the unlabelled bottles and decided to leave them alone, not wanting to expend the effort to handle them, and assuming that they'd been safe so far...

[@lambda_calc]

This just reminded of a time from my childhood when my mom (a college chemistry professor) brought home some hydrogen gas to demonstrate the formation of water from the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen. She filled some birthday balloons with hydrogen, attached some matches to a couple of yard sticks, and brought us into the driveway to watch the demo. The only problem was that the balloons had "happy birthday" printed on the side in bold lettering, so after lighting a balloon on fire, a flaming piece of rubber went flying toward the house and splattered onto the side of the house while still on fire. The printed lettering had held some of the balloon together and after dousing it with the hose we were left with a big black charred spot on our siding.

[@archerymidnight3422]

We had someone try to use a bunsen burner to directly heat a boiling tube being used for testing an organic with Tollen's reagent. They honestly need to make safety a bigger part of A level chemistry, because they genuinely didn't know either of the reasons why that was a stupid idea. The only time we were even made of chemical safety other than the basic "don't sniff or drink random things in the lab, and wear eye protection" was when we had to do risk assessments for the iodine clock experiment. They didn't even warn us about the disappearing cross experiment (which is required to pass the course) produces sulfur dioxide lol

[@That_Chemist]

Wtf

[@archerymidnight3422]

@@That_Chemist Like, they told us to put our heads over the conical flask for the disappearing cross. It was a miracle that the only injuries I remember from that class were cuts from broken glass and a few minor burns lol.

[@jtheninja5555]

I was once in my ochem lab and was vacuum filtering this product that we were working on for a couple of weeks (it was a three week lab that met once a week). After I felt that the product looked dry enough, I turned off the vacuum line and went to remove the funnel off the beaker. The lab had some buchner funnels where the stoppers weren't the tightest seal, and they sometimes had to be pushed in a bit. When I went to remove the funnel, I failed to realize that I didnt turn off the vacuum line all of the way. The funnel felt like it took a bit of pressure to get it off, so I just applied a little more force and it slipped up, causing the entire beaker to implode. My left hand was bracing the neck of the beaker to take the funnel off at the time, so when I felt the glass give way I was so scared that I was going to pull back a stump. Luckily, after I took off my glove to check the damage, I came away with no scratches, probably cause all of the glass went inwards due to the vacuum. I was even able to save my product at the end of it all because it was in my other hand. Im definitely a lot more careful now when working with vacuums and sharp glass.

[@Alex-jj3pe]

We have a form 3 printer at my workplace and let me tell you... The clear, rigid-curing polymer resin smells sooo good... Like the kind of good that would absolutely make a dumb person want to taste it.

[@JackieBright]

And when you add color it looks like a piece of candy

[@TubaHorse]

8:30, I'm pretty sure that was sulphuric acid. I once got some on a tee I was wearing and the two tiny drops ate dime sized holes in the shirt in little time.

[@Outwhere]

I lost a number of trousers by unwittingly dropping concentrated sulfuric acid on them...

[@rarebeeph1783]

It's hard to make a guess with so little information. Plenty of chemicals, acid or not, could eat a hole through a shirt that quickly.

[@TubaHorse]

@@rarebeeph1783 Very true, it would just make sense given the high school setting.

[@zetsubouda]

Just another little medical condition thing. Migraines have come up here before when you spoke about ergotamine. I myself have used the RX dihydroergotamine (more commonly DHE or Migranal) for it. Much like asthma migraine is something very sensitive to triggers that can vary a lot and many of your own which you probably won't know because so many of them are to things you don't normally encounter. For myself I can find myself with completely unbelievable migraines from even a small whiff of certain solvents. Some of them are common ones used for household or workplace cleaning that I can ask people to warn me about. However I've worked in 1 hour photo and taking lots of bio and chem related courses for environmental engineering. Never know what new and exciting migraine trigger I'll find!

[@jamesfancher7508]

Clciked on this because the title had me very very confused. Maybe change "with" to "containing," all the same, thanks for clearing it up within the first ten seconds.

[@michaireneuszjakubowski5289]

The darkroom story honestly gave me flashbacks from my childhood. I used to help my grandpa in his darkroom, learning the process, and we had the exact same problems. It was a darkroom built in the middle of the house basically, shut off from all windows, and since windows provided ventilation, there just wasn't any. And we used to spend hours there, in our knickers and nothing else - between the film dryer, the enlarger, the lamps and the rest, there were many sources of heat in a pretty tight space. So yeah, I can attest to that being a problem. And that reminded me of one story. We were developing slides using the E-6 process when, due to the dimly lit conditions (and the heat starting to impair my thinking) I knocked the solution for the final rinse off a shelf and thoroughly doused myself in it. This was a rather serious problem, since at that time (late 90s) it contained formaldehyde. I was rushed to the nearby bathroom and thoroughly washed with water and was apparently fine, but it made my grandpa rethink the whole concept of "teaching an almost naked 8 year old to handle chemicals". From then on, I stood in the corner and watched whenever dangerous chemicals were involved.

[@toddkoons790]

I went to an art school for college, because of this we didn't have a experimental chemistry class as much of the budget we to purchasing workshop materials and camera equipment. But my school knew some of us wanted to be science fiction writers so our chemistry class was mainly thought based in how to make written chemistry look right at a glance, and understanding properties of elements and certain common chemicals so we could make stuff up and again look close enough to being right that someone with a chemistry background would really have to look at it to realize we were talking out of our backsides. For our final for the class we were given fictional chemicals and a description of its effects; we had to write a formula for it and explain why we picked that formula... I remember I was given Joker Venom, a green gas that causes the victim to die with a smile. While I don't remember the exact formula I came up with I remember that it had 3 parts, N2O (laughing gas) to cause the diaphragm to spasm drawing the gas deeper into the lungs, chlorine gas, to give the distinct green color, and to do the killing and potassium oxide, causing the facial muscles to contract into a grin, even after death.

[@LuC-k777]

10:50 so damn glad I got my new respirator today for arc welding as my old one was not cutting it, ngl I’m surprised that no one else in the class was wearing one besides me.

[@bubba99009]

ZnO is something welders have to worry a lot about breathing in while welding since so a lot of stuff involves steel that is either zinc plated or dipped in zinc for corrosion resistance. I can't even imagine smelting down a whole bunch of zinc coins without PPE.

[@eldrickzod6980]

My high school had over a pound of white phosphorus just sitting in an old jar, along with bunch of potassium metal and some azides. The phosphorus almost had no water covering it, scary times.

[@JackieBright]

I definitely recommend finding and reading the rest of the orange tweet thread

[@koncuzion9511]

I work as a metal fabricator for a fibreglass composites company. On a hot summer day we once had one of the fibreglass workers soak a rag in acetone and wrap it around his neck to keep himself cool. He didn’t last very long with the company.

[@alextaunton3099]

i appreciate all these chempilations, but I have a real hankering for some of the educational videos that you used to do a lot of, like IOC videos. The tierlists and chempilations are entertaining and humorous but some more substantive material every so often is duly noticed and appreciated sir

[@189643478]

That's brilliant of the photographer! We should adopt this safety rule in all labs. Work naked so if chemicals get on you, you don't lose time stripping down before jumping in the safety shower... hahaha

[@user-hv6wb5gk8p]

Sensitive skin areas have to be covered. I am proposing that everyone wears nothing but a full face gas mask, pasties and a condom.

[@BlurbFish]

@@user-hv6wb5gk8p A modern chemist's take on the masquerade ball. Having heard of what other students have done in their labs off-hours , it does seem plausible that at least one research group out there has already done exactly that.

[@tanegram]

​@@user-hv6wb5gk8p Condoms might be undesirable when dealing with conc. nitric acid lol

[@16ORLvc]

Very interesting that there are more stories of SO2 triggering asthma… during my undergrad, my close friend with well controlled asthma had the same fate during a class… the culprit was SO2 and it was the only time he had any problems with any chemicals related to his condition…

[@applechocolate4U]

I'm a mechanic and once I got so angry at a car that I smoked brake cleaner. I'm an occasional smoker and on this day my zippo was dry from sitting around. I was too impatient to find another lighter so I soaked the cotton in brake cleaner. Brake cleaner burns, therefore brake cleaner is fuel. When I went to light up my cigarette I saw that the zippo was putting off some thick black smoke, I was too angry to care. I smoked many more cigarettes that day with that same zippo, I was coughing a bit more than usual that day, but no lasting damage. I have no idea what was in the brake cleaner, we still have the barrel but at this point I don't want to know

[@SportyMabamba]

Jesus CHRIST 😬

[@interstellarsurfer]

Phosgene baby 👌

[@That_Chemist]

👀

[@deltab9768]

A lot of them are toluene, acetone, butoxyethanol etc. in that case it’s probably carbon black that came out That’s possibly a carcinogen to some degree. If it was a chlorinated cleaner, phosgene is possible. I don’t know how much if any would actually go into the cigarette but even having it near you would be a potential problem.

[@georgiykireev9678]

For some reason I misread the title as "recycling children with phosgene" and was really intrigued by the idea

[@That_Chemist]

that sounds more like disposal

[@Jumpbaseone]

I work in a Research Lab that researches Binder Jetting 3D Printing and one of the first storys my colleagues told me when i started to work there was that one time a student tested one of the phenolic resins that glues the part together in the print process The test was to push it through a filter with the help of a syringe to check if the particles in the resin would clog up the printhead, so he got a syringe and filter and no particular PPE because what could go wrong he just needs to push a little bit of PHENOLIC RESIN through a filter right? So he pressed on the syringe full of resin, probaly as hard as he could and pushed the filter of the syringe the resin squirted everywhere and a little bit of the resin got in his eyes, so they rushed to the eye wash station called the ambulane and washed his eyes for like 15minutes till the ambulance arrived, luckily he did not damage his eyes and everything was ok in the end, he was probaly lucky that the resin was water based and water soluble and not solvent based because uncured phenolic resins are not really healthy

[@nerd1000ify]

During my honours year the same thing happened to me, except the liquid in my case was clarified E.coli lysate (basically the cell cytoplasm dissolved in tris buffered saline). Went all over my face, super gross! Thankfully the most toxic thing in the mixture was some 2-mercaptoethanol, which did nothing for the smell but wasn't going to kill me.

[@Torporr]

Easily the most chaotic title to a video i have ever seen

[@tammyhollandaise]

Back in welding class, we had to practice TIG welding on aluminum. The TIG stations were enclosed in pairs within big steel boxes, with the argon cylinders in an adjacent room. My roommate and I were scheduled for the same lab, and ended up in the same pair of welding stations one day. After maybe half an hour of constant welding, my roommate gets audibly frustrated by his results. I pop around the divider for a looksee, and his welds just look like absolute hot garbage. I watch him attempt another spot, with the same results. I attempted a spot on his machine, with the same results. The shielding gas sounded a little funny, so I went to check out his cylinder; verified it was open and had argon. Had him run another spot and I saw the indicator ball on the regulator didn't move. He had opened the cylinder, but assumed the previous user had left the regulator adjusted for welding; instead, it was set to 0. My roommate had been vaporizing his tungsten electrodes and allowing his aluminum to react with air. We had a chuckle at his expense, and continued on. After welding, we had an ASME club meeting in the same building. As we sat listening to our advisor, I felt myself becoming dizzy and nearly fell off my stool. I must have looked awful, as everything stopped and the advisor asked if I was feeling okay. At this point, my roommate also nearly falls off his stool, and it's pretty obvious something is wrong with both of us. We somewhat explain through slurred speech that it might be because we'd just inhaled a bunch of tungsten. Our advisor, being an ex navy nuclear engineer, wanted to see what kind of setup could possibly poison two people at once, so we walked/stumbled over to the welding lab. While we observed other people TIG welding at the stations, it was discovered that nobody had bothered to turn on the fume extractors the entire day. We were advised to go home and get some rest. While we should have gone to see a doctor, we instead decided to walk home. What proceeded was a mile of downhill stumbling, retching, and pauses to catch our breath. It felt like we were on the bender to end all benders, but somehow we made it home and got the key in the front door. We both collapse on the couch and agree that we shouldn't try to think or fall asleep; therefore, watch something on TV we'd seen before. The first thing I see on the list is "How It's Made" (aka: Bedtime Stories for Engineers). Clearly logic had left our brains, because we were both unconscious within a minute or two. Three hours later, our third roommate comes home, and startles us both awake. No longer dizzy, we were grateful to be alive; plus, it was the best nap I'd had in years.

[@Morbacounet]

One of my university classmates washed his hands with acetone at the lab. Our teacher didn't like that idea.

[@JelB]

Maybe not washing, but I've rinsed my hands with acetone more often than I should have, not a great idea of course but really quite convenient (although you should not be doing it, there's taps with soap for a reason)

[@origamigamer8990]

5:25 Not a chemist, but I used to live in a house built in 1968. So, the garage was a treasure trove of old, highly toxic chemicals! The ones that really freaked me out were the thallium rat poison, arsenic trioxide ant killer, and a brown glass bottle full of a non-descript “herbicide”. Safe to say, I had to get that cleaned out

[@JimmyJamesJ]

5:38 I work at a nuclear research facility that’s been around since 1945. We have a lot of old laboratories dating back to the 1950’s and 1960’s. A lot of materials get left behind and orphaned when people retire. I’m an engineer responsible for maintaining these lab buildings and keeping the labs in operation. I’ve seen a lot of really sketchy, dangerous things that were orphaned, lost and/or left behind when they should have been disposed of or replaced years ago. I’ve gained a healthy distrust of laboratories, laboratory technicians and research scientists from my field experience working in these laboratory buildings. I try really hard to keep you folks safe from your own devices but it’s sort of like telling an old logger he’s not using a chainsaw safely. “Listen Sony, I’ve been using a chainsaw for 45 years without ever having an accident and I don't need some young whippersnapper telling me…”, as he saws his leg off in front of me. My hair is turning grey and I'm developing a bald patch.

[@Kenionatus]

"I've been doing this for 45 years and nothing has ever happened." As the Shake Hands With Danger riff starts playing in the background. (If you haven't seen the video yet, it's a certified health and safety classic for the mechanical, construction and mining trades.)

[@seneca983]

I thought the title meant that they used phosgene to recycle chloroform.

[@lmaoproductions9948]

I love these videos so I thought I should share a story from my work (on a throwaway account because this technically falls under an NDA, not that anyone would care though) I work as a Chemical Process Operator at a big chemical plant, running and maintaining various reactions and distillations. (So basically a chemist, but not really) Steam is the primary heat source to run the distillation towers by having it condensate back into water in a reboiler at the base of the towers. This condensate (which is still well over 100 degrees C) gets used again to heat other distillations and reactions, before a part of it gets rerouted into the building that houses the controlroom in order to save on heating during the winter months. The condensate passes a service room where it exchange heat with the water from the radiators. Back in 2017, another plant on our site was performing a start-up after being shut-down for around 2 months in order to do repairs, check-ups, upgrades,... They were way over schedule and the management was really desperate to get going again, 'forcing' the operators of the plant to skip certain checks before start-up. One particular check they were told to skip, was to see if a reboiler hadn't sprung any leaks during the cleaning process. (In the business, we call this foreshadowing) Start-up went mostly smoothly, some leaks were detected but nothing serious. Then they started filling up the Isobutylene distillation and started heating it up with steam. After several minutes, an alarm alerted the operator that C4-gas was detected in the condensate, he immediately stopped the heating process but the damage was already done. Seconds after he stopped the heating, an explosion tore through the controlroom, blowing out all the windows and destroying several walls. Luckily, this happened when only the shift personnel was present, and nobody get seriously injured (if this happened during day-hours, it would've been much worse). What had happened was that there was a hole in the tube heat exchanger of the Isobutylene distillation, making it possible for the Isobutylene to get in to the condensate. This condensate was then rerouted to the controlroom-building where it was possible for the Isobutylene to escape in the service room. Eventually, it reached it's lower explosion limit and found an ignition source and KA-BOOM. The explosion was felt throughout the site, with windows flying open several hundred meters away. The controlroom was smashed to bits and they had to make an emergency back-up controlroom while they were fixing the annihilated one. After this event, all plants on the site updated their heating systems so that the exchange of heat from the condensate to the radiator water happens on the roof, instead of in the building itself. Moral of the story: Don't rush things, safety is paramount and always comes first. And keep the process separated from the main building. Ironic part about this all: We are always taught that the controlroom is THE safest place to be during a calamity, but in this case it was the LEAST safest place to be at.

[@lmaoproductions9948]

(I should add that we are always very careful and safety conscious. This is just a story that anything can happen. We always say "We don't work in a cookie factory" because when it goes wrong at are work, it goes VERY wrong VERY quickly)

[@Tekdruid]

10:55 My backyard aluminum furnace used zinc-coated water piping for air intake. Luckily I managed to avoid any zinc-related ailments though, probably mostly because I only used it in open air instead of indoors.

[@samuellima6193]

One day, our STEM teacher decided to make a chemical experiment: the hydrolysis of water. That happened around 1 year ago. Our teacher was using a bowl full of water and was using some eletric cables and related stuff to do the experiment (he/she was using gloves and the necessary PPE). Them, a lound noise was heard of and the water exploded (though no equipement was broken) and it splashed into the roof. Fortunately, nobody was injured

[@pirobot668beta]

Cleaned out an old Histology locker; found picric acid, bone dry, in a glass jar. Coffee Creamer jars don't make good chemical storage: hand-written label was badly faded. The steel lid was badly rusted...the Fire Department was called, they sent a 'bomb tech' to deal with it. His solution to 2 kilos of high explosive? Poked a hole in the lid and ran in some tap water. "It's perfectly safe when it's wet!"

[@kaboom4679]

Of course the tech was right , except maybe about the stuff the TNP made with the iron in the lid . But , with the TNP desensitized by the water , it lowered the risk exponentially .

[@deltab9768]

Might be better to use distilled water next time. That way, it won’t form salts that will make it even more unstable if it dries again.

[@eddecimoni]

I'm not a chemist by any means, but I got a couple of funny stories with it I was doing a Technical course alongside highschool in order to be a Machinist. As we worked with metals, we had to protect them against corrosion. The most popular method was putting your part in a jar of mineral oil. But one day a genius decided to store a part he made in a fluid consisting of H2O2 and cooling solution that we used to prevent the parts from overheating, as machining metal generates loads of heat (it had mostly water in its composition). Needless to say, the usually shiny ABNT 1020 Steel was completely brown the next time he had to work on it. he had to sand all the rust off (keep in mind that the part has around 700mm in length) and he simply could not do it if his life depended on it, so the teacher got him a new, complete and rust-free part while simultaneously guillotining his grades lmao One day we learned about heat treating of parts in order to make them more sturdy, basically you heat the steel to loosen up its structures and then you cool it in a number of different ways in order to control what kind of sturdiness it got. You can heat-treat a part in tons of different ways, but the dumb adolescents only cared about one, quenching. Quenching is literally heating a sample then dumping it in water, it was in theory stupid easy to do. In theory. Fast forward to me and two of my friends with oxy acetylene industrial blowtorches heating up a cutting tool for lathes at the same time. I could swear the thing got almost white hot with the unrelenting barrage of blue flames it was receiving. When we felt like it, we dumped it in a huge reservoir of pure water. In chemistry it is supposed to increase the hardness of the steel by forming new martensite formations, but in our heads it was nothing more than "hot steel" + "cool water" = "super hard steel". Now if you heat up the sample by too much, it will harden by too much as well, and that was a problem. Super hard things are very easy to crack in pieces (porcelain is very hard for example). And we were quenching a CUTTING TOOL. USED TO CUT OTHER ALLOYS OF STEEL. Needless to say the poor thing did not last a single day as a cutting tool because as soon as we used it in a slightly harder metal than usual the whole thing just cracked in pieces and then started emitting this deathly underworld sound of hopelessness and despair white throwing sparks all over the lathe and us. I swear usain bolt was the second fastest person in the world at the moment the teacher listened to it. We got suspended, it was not worth it.

[@queefyg490]

Not only does chloroform react with oxygen to produce phosgene, it also produces equal parts chlorine gas as well, which is probably the only reason he didn’t get enough of a wiff to inhale a lethal does of phosgene. A concentration of only 5ppm can kill, you just have to be around it for a while, which is kinda impossible if there’s chlorine in the room as well.

[@jnb756]

That was what I was wondering since I was taught the "golden rule" of phosgene was if you smell fresh cut grass - it's too late.

[@CharlesCoderre-yv1cu]

couldn't the contaminated chloroform be treated with aqueous sod carbonate first (until no more relese of CO2)? That should take care of the phosgene & Cl2

[@dimaminiailo3723]

@@CharlesCoderre-yv1cu it can be, but fractional distillation should be the easiest method of dealing with a large amount of rusty chloroform. properly working fumehood is required

[@empressofshurima]

I have a fun question. What do you get when you put a bunch of inexperienced 2nd Year Chemical Engineering students in an Organic Chemistry lab at 4-7PM on a Friday night? You get a few air-headed students unintentionally inhaling HCl gas after opening (outside the fumehood 💀) a test tube with Phenol + Acetyl Chloride in it. ( ^: I mean, we WERE warned in the lab manual, to be fair. xd

[@edymarin7781]

When melting/forging different metals, not only is it important to know what metals you are working with, but also what fluxes you are working it (or if the substance you are using is even a flux). This is the story from that time I made copper burn. I've been melting ang casting metals at home for well over 8 years by now, so I know what metals and alloys are dangerous to melt (zinc is such a pain). However, fluxes still give me a hard time (mostly because I don't bother to use them all that often). Last week I decided to cast some dice out of aluminium (because I sone of the easiest metals to work with), but before I coud melt down some metal and cast it, I had to clean my steel crucible from my last project (there was a bunch of "shronze", aka shit bronze, stuck on the bottom of the crucible. In my bright mind, I decided to load the crucible with some aluminium (cause it can dissolve copper and coper based alloys pretty easily) , some tin (to make the alloy less viscous) , and some copper, along with a few left over pieces of "shronze", melt all of them down, cleaning the crucible in the process, and maybe get a usable alloy. Nothing wrong so far. Here is where de F up occurs. I decide to use some flux for the first time in probably 2 years in order to shield the left over zinc in the alloy (shronze had some zinc in it because I mistook a brass piece for bronze and added it when I created it, ruining a whole batch). I went to my shed where I store some of my inorganic chemicals and grabbed a unlabelled bag containing what I thought to be sodium carbonate (from the last time I made copper basic carbonate). Tested if it melts on the hot lid of the foundary, and added heaps of it to the, now very hot, crucible. Oddly enough, it did not melt, but it seemed to be sublimating. And the molten metal seemed to become more and more viscous as I stirred. Then it happened. The insides of the crucible lit on fire, white smoke began to come out ( I was outside, so not that big of a problem). "Oh well, the leftover zinc is burning out" I thought. But the intensity of the light was a bit too strong for burning zinc. Then the flame turned a green hue. I left for a bit, so the white smoke could clear up a bit, because my eyes were stinging a little bit. When I came back, I went to stir the metal, to make the zinc burn faster, but to my surprse, there wasn't any metal left. I took the crucible out, dumped it, and all I got were a few tiny drops of metal in a pile of black slag. All of the metals had burned. Aluminium, gone, zinc, gone, tin, gone. Even the copper was completely gone. I later realised that the unlabelled mystery bag was in fact not sodium carbonate, but rather calcium hypochlorite. Lesson of the day, know what you are working eith, before you start working.

[@nigeldepledge3790]

Oh, yikes! Failing to label containers of chemicals is one of the worst things in a lab. In some places I've worked, it is a sacking offence.

[@edymarin7781]

@@nigeldepledge3790 as it should be. But when there isn't somebody to punish you for your incompetence, the univese does it

[@stephenjacks8196]

"Always store Permanganate and Peroxide in the "Oxidizer" area to be safe" in plant operations manual.

[@stephenjacks8196]

Fume hoods. Industrial factories are giant fume hoods. Our employer provided uniform was OK but our cotton underwear had holes from sulfuric acid mist. We had an explosion outside "waste treatment"(they used borohydride) near the "No Smoking - Hydrogen" sign: due to cigarette addicts.

[@genericcheesewedge4870]

The problem with these very toxic resin printers is that they are starting to become super common in the consumer space as they offer superior resolution with very low cost components, with many people not respecting the resin at all or even knowing how dangerous they are.

[@KnightsWithoutATable]

My college chemistry class had strict clothing requirements for clothing, but not as strict as they could be. The clothing requirements for working as an industrial electrician on the other hand, required only natural fiber clothing, with a recommendation for purchasing flame retardant clothing. I have worked in a quality control lab that had no safety training or rules enforcement which was made worse by having some of the production workers coming in to do their own tests for process control (why we didn't take the sample and do the tests I could never get a straight answer on). So many people in that lab wearing clothing they shouldn't and handling strong acids and bases like they were water. The manager fired me because I kept correcting people on how they were handling the chemicals when I would spot them about to spill them, usually on their faces or bare skin. "You are not qualified to tell them they are being unsafe." My answer, "They almost blinded themself with 12 molar HCl. You would have preferred I just let that happen?". They demoted me shortly after that and then fired me for an attendance policy that didn't exist. Found a better job after that, so I didn't care.

[@xjunkxyrdxdog89]

6:30 all storage leaks under the right conditions. Ever seen superfluid dripping through glass?

[@13deadghosts]

What is it with this channel and Phosgene all the time? Is this "Warcriminals Anonymous"? Great video as always :)

[@That_Chemist]

Thank you :)

[@Corvid]

Not quite chemistry related, but training to be a paramedic in a UK NHS trust that shall remain nameless (other than being in the East of England.....), we got given vials of out-of-date adrenaline to practice intramuscular injections. Apparently actual IM injection dummies are too expensive, so after 5 minutes of brief tuition, we were each issued... an orange. After demonstrating the procedure right before lunch, we of course ate said oranges, with no noticeable effects, other than a very bitter segment. One orange however did cause one of my classmates to urinate relentlessly for the rest of the day... that particular orange had been "administered" multiple vials of the diuretic Ferosemide!

[@kaboom4679]

Many decades ago , I went through medic training , and have a similar story about a class on IM administration of epi . Instead of giving us expired epi , we were given vials of expired Narcan , with which to torture innocent oranges . Afterwards I suggested we take the oranges to the park and hand them out to the homeless ...

[@colinrobinson9858]

Grade 11 chem- We were doing a lab on the properties of various metals, including sodium. In a few groups of 4 or 5 we placed a sugar cube sized chunk in a beaker and wrote down the results. As expected, a fairly violent reaction but safe in our small beaker with a metal lid on top. All of a sudden, what sounds like a gunshot causes everyone to scream and jump, and we turn around to see a massive flame pop and water spray everywhere. One group had somehow caused a small explosion to send bits of sodium and water flying all over themselves and their notes and laptops. I happened to be standing directly beside the explosion washing out our beaker and was watching as it happened. One of my classmates had his head over the beaker to record observations and had it explode in his face. Thank god for goggles. Still to this day no one knows the cause, I suspect it may have been due to negligence when washing beakers inbetween experiments, whether soap or metals were left as residue could have some effect. All of the sodium pieces were the same size. The explosion scared my teacher so bad we had a supply come in and demo the other and more dangerous metals while she recovered- ironically, no one cared because the sodium explosion was 100x more violent

[@erikfreeman45]

My standard chem story: I was in a physical chemistry lab and my partner handled concentrated sulfuric acid. I didn't touch the stuff and generally have had pretty safe habits in Lab. We finished, and I got Chicken Tikka Masala from an Indian food truck. I noticed a weird redish stain on my blue shirt and assumed I got a pretty bad spot of sauce from the food. It was until I got home that I noticed the color was a much duller purple color and upon inspection, the fibers just disintegrated like dust. No rash or anything, certainly could have been much worse but it's like finding a bullet hole in something close to you that merely has been to a gun range.

[@zfox1]

I laughed way too much at the ppe for the pp

[@kattikoskinen9122]

I've developed zinc fever a few times from welding some sketchy materials in a sketchy working space. I don't think it does any long term damage though, since zinc oxide is practically nontoxic. You build up a tolerance if you do it every day, but it's still better to just have proper ventilation.

[@awj42164]

less a chemistry story and more a general safety one: one time in middle school science class we were doing some experiment that involved a lit candle. it was towards the end of class and my classmate sat across from me. one of the candles was still lit and she had her head over the table writing some stuff down, her hair unfortunately not tied up. i looked away for one second before i heard a sound that makes your stomach drop; a slight "fwshh" as my classmate's hair caught on fire, accompanied by whiff of that delectable burnt hair smell. tiny me panicked, froze, and didn't know what to do, but thankfully the teacher saw the hair ignite and grabbed a fire extinguisher and absolutely doused my classmate in its contents. she ended up being fine with no large burns (save for some burnt hair).

[@billwalck1324]

Years ago, it was considered proper to weld on galvanized steel as long as you drank milk first and during the process. Supposedly the fat in the milk chelated the zinc. Those guys tended to go on disability early.

[@TomášPavelčík-d4m]

In college for many of us analytical chemistry course was the first time we were doing something in a lab. There were many smaller incidents, like getting sprayed with iodine mixture from automatic burette, pouring some smelly organics down the sink, adding hot solution to DCM for extraction and subsequent near explosion but it all resulted in one memorable experience. One day my friend was doing extensive qualitative analysis of ions and after they finished she dumped everything into the sink. The person in charge of the lab horrified (there were a lot of Hg, Cd, Ni, As, Pb samples) gave a quick safety lecture. After that she was so shaken from that lab experience so far that at the end of the next project she asked her colleagues nearby if she can pour down the sink her waste container. They looked at her in confusion saying "are you asking if you can pour down the sink that sodium chloride solution? yes?" and then she realised. So that was kinda funny.

[@miscellaneousstuff6346]

These Chempolations are my favourite videos now, I'm not even studying or doing much chemistry related

[@That_Chemist]

Glad to hear you are enjoying them :)

[@miscellaneousstuff6346]

@@That_Chemist omg I do my own b&w film processing to, I never wear ppe, I just make sure I don’t splash it around. I use Kodak HC110, Rodinal (Adonal in the UK) and Kodack XTOL developers if it’s of any interest

[@GerinoMorn]

I have asthma and it's so unpredictable. You can smoke cigs and be fine and then you smell an incense and you're wheezing like an octogenarian.

[@cpt_nordbart]

Yeah I was told that zinc coated screws are dangerous when you heat them up. Not that we didn't do that anyway...

[@tanithrosenbaum]

Reminds me of something a coworker told me. As undergrad they were voluntold to help with cleaning out a storage room after one of the professors had left to volunteer themselves for a last practical study on soil biome fertilization from decaying organic matter (i.e. they had died). Among all sorts of crusty bottles from various decades of the 20th century, they found a wooden box with a chemicals supplier label that read "Thallium Metal, Rods, 1 kg" in pristine condition, obviously never touched or opened. When they carefully looked inside they found two metal rods of what from the description of the metal could have been Thallium alright. They decided not to test their lab skills (and push their luck) by trying to analyze it, and instead closed the box again very carefully, set it aside and cleaned out the rest of the room. After that was done and after some careful asking around what to do with it, they found that having it disposed professionally would cost thousands and might easily cause some waves in the press. So instead the person in charge put it back inside the room, locked the door, and effectively threw away the key. For all I know, there may still be an abandoned and locked storage room without windows at some university to this day that has a bunch of empty shelves and one wooden box with 1kg of thallium metal in it.... 😅

[@dejjal8683]

My eye-opening incident with a solvent happened when a 4L jug of DCM shattered inside a cardboard box and I was part of the spill crew. The glue, that under normal circumstances was pretty strong, was nowhere to be seen or felt. Fun fact, when cleaning up large spills of chlorinated solvents it is strongly recommended, if not required, that you wear a Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus.

[@BlixenBlorp]

I love this series, I feel like I'm speed running the Shake Hands with Danger segment on Well There's Your Problem

[@SomeOrdinaryJanitor]

Chloroform… with Phosgene… what could go wrong

[@stanbrow]

Welding galvanized material also is a breathing zinc risk.

[@MakeItWithCalvin]

The darkroom story reminded me a little of doing B&W film photography in college. Thankfully no crazy stories about chemicals squirting but it was not uncommon for me to have chemicals on my fingers, nervously bite my fingers, and then shortly after my heart was racing! Lesson learned, always wash your hands after! Also, those automatic paper developer machines crank out an INSANE amount of heat, not to mention the bulbs in the enlarging machine... Ahh, fun times.

[@AnimeShinigami13]

When explaining the effects of a supervolcano (I went through a long phase of being a disaster science and survival nerd), I tell people that if one went off, I know exactly how I'd be spending the ten years or more after it went off; coughing and hacking in asthmatic misery because of the sulpher dioxide. Such an eruption throws sulpher dioxide into the upper stratosphere. It takes a decade or more to settle out and takes that opportunity to spread world wide causing global cooling and serious lung issues. Likewise, I tell people that in the event we have to use geoengineering to mitigate climate change, that I will strenuously object to the mass release of sulpher dioxide in an attempt to create an artificial volcanic winter, as it is theorized we might do. And if the rest of the world doesn't like it, fuck them all. My lungs come before covering up for their not giving a fuck about the environment. In that scenario, they could have done something, they chose to prioritize the economy over doing the right things, now society is going to shit, they don't get to subject me to years of hacking up a lung just because they couldn't be bothered. No no no no no. I get very anxious about not being able to breathe, please chemists and roboticists, please come up with working respirocytes QUICKLY so that I don't have to worry about death by suffocation ever again. And curse you Yellowstone Caldera for giving governments ideas about how to use science to be lazy about ethics!!!! 💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢💢 On a slightly related note, for burning the amazon, Bolsonaro can tongue kiss an open beaker of sulpher dioxide.

[@Aslyuriel]

Not my story, but my Fathers When he was in High School his chemistry teacher was demonstrating the reaction of either potassium or sodium in water. She had a huge block of the stuff on a cutting board next to the sink, which was filled with water for the demonstration. Whilst cutting this massive butter block of metal into a chunk suitable for the demonstration, the cutting board flipped I guess as the whole block ended up in the water and detonated almost immediately, completely annihilating the sink and surrounding cupboard. Nobody was injured, Somehow, And a lesson was learnt that day, Or so you'd think as it apparently happened again a month later.

[@mechadrake]

Omg, the girl with a hole in a shirt is so similar story that happened in my school. Though nobody was concened much. and we knew it was one of the acids

[@tv-pp]

I had nitric acid vapors burn holes in a green cotton shirt, and on the edges of the holes the dye turned purple

[@jasonmurawski5877]

I can’t believe you didn’t include the entire thread from that first tweet. Regardless, I spent a considerable amount of time at one point making it into one block of text, so here it is, in its entirety: When an article says "some scientists think" then remember this: I, a scientist, once thought I could fit a whole orange in my mouth. I could, it turns out, get it in there, but I hadn't given sufficient thought to the reverse operation. I should also, on reflection, have practiced in private. I had an audience, which grew as my initial satisfaction at an hypothesis well proven, slipped rapidly through stages of qualm, disquiet, then alarm (mild through severe) and ended in full blown panic. When one panics, one's muscles tense, which is of course, the opposite of what I needed here. I had been quite relaxed at the start, but now I couldn't get a finger between the orange and the very taut edges of my mouth. Above and below, the orange, which was now under some pressure, deformed to make a nearly perfect seal against my teeth. I hadn't previously been aware of how much oxygen one needs to consume an orange, but I was made aware of it now by its sudden and ongoing lack. I forgot for a moment that I had nostrils and tried to breathe in hard through my mouth. I have big lungs. When the doctor tested my lung capacity, I blew the end clean off the cardboard tube. I've always been vaguely proud of that; mostly for want of more tangible achievements and because I am, when all is said and done, the kind of person otherwise predisposed to shove a whole orange in his mouth without cause. Those enormous lungs - my pride and joy - expanding in this moment of crisis to their fullest extent, had created a hard vacuum behind the orange, which, at that point imploded. From now on, things which had been unfolding at an almost leisurely pace, started to happen rather fast. So, I will take this opportunity to say that no one had actually tried to help me up till now. This was not for lack of opportunity. Later, someone mentioned the kind of details - veins like worms scribbling incomprehensible messages across my forehead, eyes popping out as if on stalks, laced with tiny red veins - which one can only truly apprehend at a distance that wouldn't have made help impossible. But back to the imploding orange. Although it didn't diminish appreciably in volume upon implosion, the released juice vaporised, turning into a burning acidic cloud that instantly flooded my lungs. My lungs very sensibly responded by collapsing rapidly aided by an involuntary and powerful spasm from my diaphragm. The vapour and oily zest from the orange's skin mixed with mucus scoured from my lungs (that spread flat, we must remember, would cover a tennis court) as well as the last of my residual oxygen, exited now through my rediscovered nostrils as a magnificently abundant yellow foam. And, having a volume in excess of what could easily egress at speed via those narrow tubes, it also squirted out through nearby exits, including around my eyes. Even that wasn't enough and the build up of pressure finally proved too much for the orange, which left my mouth like grapeshot from a cannon, like the superluminal jets generated by matter falling towards a black hole at relativistic speed. Temporarily blind and gasping in my own private world of consequences, I was unaware of the cone of devastation that I had unleashed upon the unluckier segment of my audience, occupying roughly one steradian of solid angle to my front. When I finally recovered my senses and the cycle of whooping inhalation and coughing fits had exhausted itself, I was greeted not by the concern that I felt such a brush with death merited, but with a disgust that later reflection suggests may not have been wholly unwarranted. So, anyway, whenever you read "some scientists think", think about me and recalibrate the lower end of your expectations accordingly.

[@mezu-e]

I can sympathize with that 100k loss... I probably completely toasted a 30k electronic assembly and a technician is probably going to lose a couple days trying to fix it.

[@Cessated]

Here's a quick story from me: When I was 6, I likes to mess around by the sink. I put bleach in the sink to ""save the fishies"". A few minutes after I had left the bathroom, I started to have an extreme coughing fit. My grandma noticed, and asked if I was okay. I said yes, and she checked around to see what was going on. Upon seeing the bottle of bleach open, she immediately panicked and forced me to take a bath. That somehow stopped the coughing. I had gotten chlorine gas poisoning.

[@alladora1980]

videos like these make me reconsider my idea of doing chemistry.

[@disastranagant]

Should have included the whole thread for that first tweet. It really goes places.

[@JohnnyYeTaecanUktena]

One thing that you don't ever want to hear from anyone messing with dangerous stuff is "That isn't supposed to happen". Like i was in my bedroom removing capacitors from a old non functional N64 power supply so i can harvest the copper wires as i like harvesting valuable remains that i can either melt down or reuse in something else and copper is always useful as a conductor o used as a insulator but after i removed all the capacitors i looked down at my Nitrile exam gloves (I figured those gloves were rubber enough to withstand electrical shocks if the capacitors somehow still worked) and it was torn on my right hand so i said out loud "That isn't supposed to happen" my mom hollered back "WHAT?" and i said in reply "Nothing" as she knew i had my door open incase of an emergency. But the gloves were torn by the PCB as one hand holding it down while the other one has the pliers with a rubber grip taking the capacitors off before i can start my harvest and yes i changed gloves when i did not have to as again all of the capacitors were already taken care of But my mom was in the other room far enough away where she shouldn't be hearing me say that without selective hearing. She also told me to close my door if there were going to be fumes and i told her that if there were going to be fumes i would do it outside where it is ventilated

[@That_Chemist]

Bro, your mom asked you to keep the fumes in your room…

[@JohnnyYeTaecanUktena]

@@That_Chemist Well to be fair i left out the part where there is always a AC unit in my window so my room is always pretty ventilated especially on windy days as i am too lazy to remove it in the winter. But she did not think about the fumes traveling through the air vents to get to the rest of the house otherwise i would have been told to do it outside just like putting super glue on ducktape apparently gives off some fumes, according to my dad that is as he has had plenty of accidents with super glue including kids running around a table bumping into him making him super glue his eyes shut once. He was rushed to the ER and had his eyes washed out and everything was fine after but he did learn never mess with super glue with hyper ass kids around. My dad also did tell me "Since Johnny is going to do what Johnny wants to do then at least do it on a weekend when i don't work that way i can take your dumb ass to the ER or do it outside" yeah i wanted to super glue duck tape and see what happened as i don't believe him about the fumes. Yeah my parents just gave up trying to explain stuff to me a very long time ago as i never understood their explanations so i always just learn stuff the hard way by doing it and surviving if the thing was dangerous. Well minus the fact that i always wore gloves and goggles for messing with chemicals and electrical stuff as i might be a slow hands on learner but i am not stupid plus wearing those makes me feel like a scientist. That reminds me i need to buy a lab coat as i wanna start working with chemicals again but i don't want to do it without a coat you know melting down old non functional circuit boards extracting the gold from them type of stuff. No i don't sell the gold it is just a hobby collect enough to make a 18fl ounce ingot same with copper and other metals minus Uranium as i don't feel like learning the proper waste disposal/ storage or making a nuclear reactor so i won't extract it from root vegetables or Bananas till i am not lazy and actually look the proper handling up and get a hazmat suit

[@christopherleubner6633]

The ancient can of CoF3 that literally soldered togther was rusted through and covered with multicolor fluoride crystals making a nice fuzz around it. The label and packing inside were disibtigrated as well as the intermal metal can that held the chemical. Pretty nasty.

[@marx96xVx]

"Make sure your PP has PPE" made me laugh out loud at 2am

[@tOGGLEwAFFLES]

I could safely do the poison ivy sniff test because of my weird allergies. I'm almost entirely immune to poison ivy, having it stay on my skin for hours (not noticing obviously, I wouldn't have tested it intentionally) and barely gotten itchy, but instantly break out into extremely itchy bright red hives if I use most strong oil cutting soaps that you would use to wash off poison ivy. I also can't wash dishes by hand because of that same allergy and have to wash my hands thoroughly if I get any detergent on myself.

[@devin3117]

i have a brick of zinc ive been gradually adding to with pennies that I melt on my kitchen stove

[@That_Chemist]

bad

[@shinypaintf588]

it's wild to me that these videos get less views than the rest on his channel, i thought these would be the most popular because they're my personal favorite but i guess i just like storytimes way more than the average viewers of the channel hahaha

[@markmcgoveran6811]

No matter what never have a person put his mouth on a tube stuck in something poisonous.

[@AsymptoteInverse]

6:09: I have an indirect story of discovering something horrifying from the last century. A few years ago, I worked at a company that occasionally distributed injectable insecticides (hypodermics for trees). One of our clients, who handled a much wider variety of pesticides, told us the horror story of how they were cleaning out their warehouse and discovered a 55-gallon drum of some nightmare mercury-based pesticide.

[@That_Chemist]

💀

[@petevenuti7355]

You need to do a video on analytic chemistry! It's hard to calculate your yield if you don't even know what you have!

[@razgrizfromacecombat5]

Last week, during an experimental organic chemistry class where we were doing a cannizzaro reaction, my ass of a teacher turned off the fume hood while three people were adding concentrated HCl into the sodium benzoate solution to precipitate benzoic acid (without ice cubes) and the bottle of said concentrated HCl had the lid off, leading to one of my friends getting her hand burnt, another getting his nose irritated and the whole room smelling like a bleach factory. All of this because "nobody was hearing his explanation due to the noise". Sometimes college do be like that man.

[@marluna_x]

We once did an experiment with hydrogen in school. The bottle started making a loud scary noise. It worked fine though...

[@starrynyte158]

Omfg I'm definitely not a chemist, but I'm a nail tech and the idea of someone handling resin like that person in the fabrication lab story is horrifying! The lengths we go to to try and keep resin from touching skin as we apply sculpted nails is rather extreme because of the likelihood of developing resin allergies. So scary that people are handling resin without the education required

[@u.v.s.5583]

Fun Fact: J. K. Rowling's Chamber of Secrets was inspired by her old chemistry lab at school.