I also suggest watching the Periodic Table of Videos episode on Flourine: https://youtu.be/vtWp45Eewtw
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-Informal-History-Liquid-Prop...
He did an excellent job of describing some truly terrifying chemical substances in a lighthearted and engaging way.
Dimethylmercury and hydrofluoric acid are both mentioned in this list of "10 Ridiculously Dangerous Chemicals", https://listverse.com/2016/12/09/10-ridiculously-dangerous-c....
I heard a story once of a student putting a bottle into his backpack and cycling across the city to another university building to use it in another lab. The mind boggles at the stupidity.
Burn cream on hands, two pairs of gloves, one silk one leather, leather apron and splash goggles. Comes packed in a plastic container which is secured to a small wooden pallette with the bottle held upright in a box with wooden batterns. Impressive warning signs.
OA has solved the mystery of why we had to use these precautions!
The lab had a shower cubicle in the corner, with a tank on top and pull handle. The idea was that if you got any on you, taking an immediate shower in caustic soda was the best thing to do...
Our top H&S guy decided that as he was responsible he should be the one to test it he did cheat a bit by wearing swimming goggles to protect his eyes. He commented it was like being sand blasted with small ball bearings and "fracking hurt"
But that sounds - if you'll pardon the pun - like child's play compared to your boiling(!) nitric, HF and perchloric acid. I cannot image how you'd even contain such an evil substance? And what was it used for?
There are certainly much nastier chemicals used that this in industry. As an example, I'm reminded of a quote by Gordon Moore about Intel having melted their sewer pipe, in this article:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-15/american-...
But even few years ago I visited a wolfram mine in Portugal on a job, and was told by the guy I worked with at the time that the miners are using stuff "banned long time ago in UK" to clean the tips of the guiding ropes which we were replacing. I was never told what it was, but nowadays I suspect it was HF.
Concentrated HF is another beast entirely.
Also it's pretty insane IMO to put it in a bottle labeled 'rust remover'. That's bound to cause accidents like this with people thinking it's just any old stain-away soap.
The worst horror story I was told about phenol was of a grad student a few years before me doing a large DNA extraction using phenol in a 3 litre measuring cylinder. They filled it with phenol and DNA solution and then sealed the end using parafilm (a stretchy plastic membrane). They then mixed the solution by inverting the cylinder. You won't be surprised to learn that phenol dissolves parafilm and the phenol ran straight down the student's arm and they ran straight off to hospital.
Fortunately they were able to right the truck without any spilling.
That one you probably _do_ want a Prop 65 notification for ...
To be honest, Flourine is a scary atom. A lot of the bonds it forms are also scary. And toxic.
Needless to say, officials are reconsidering the use of Hydrofluoric acid at the facility: http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/business/energy-and-mining/...
Me - I use PPE when working with pretty much any solvent or etchant. And that includes gloves and goggles at a minimum. And if the stuff is not nice, I'm using a stick of sorts to apply (wood, metal, glass; whichever's less reactive).
And if I were dealing with things like HF, you can bet your ass that I'm building some sort of automated setup. HF spattering on a webcam lens means a loss of $50. HF spattering on me means I possibly will die or suffer horrendously. Same with lasers as well. Telepresence is so much safer, and failure means a few hundred dollars of equipment replacement.
For those unfamiliar with how blood supplies various molecules, some of it solved in blood directly, some of it bound to carriers, most famous probably being oxygen: It's not like in a human supply chain where an empty truck or a train is loaded to capacity and then again emptied completely when it reaches a destination point. Instead, it's an equilibrium that changes based on things like partial pressure or acidity (pH is very slightly more basic in the lungs, slightly more acidic in the periphery, because of CO2 - also see "Bohr effect") and a lot of other variables. There is no 0% or a 100%. Here is an example for a curve for oxygen: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-biology2/chapter/transp...
My point is that you have to weigh benefits of getting calcium there rapidly vs. potential harms of radial artery occlusion.
No one ever discusses the toothpaste fluorine ions, in conjuction with the much more terrifying acid, which is the boogey man that haunts the fears behind fluoridated water, and so on...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtWp45Eewtw&feature=youtu.be
(edit: added link)
MITx 3.091 "Introduction to Solid State Chemistry"
https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-solid-state-chemistr...
It's "archived" - good enough, everything is accessible, you just won't be able to get a "grade".
It's the gateway to "materials science" too. It is more at the edge of chemistry, towards physics and engineering. Not to mention that the teaching in this course is pretty good. Also, it is not dumbed down, you can go to MIT, take the same course and feel right at home. It's about properties of materials as a consequence of the chemical/physical properties of the components (atoms/molecules) and how they are structured (example: diamond and graphite are both made of carbon, then why are they so different).
If you want to get up to speed on "just chemistry" try Khan Academy, their explanations are pretty good and you can easily select what interests you because it is broken down into many small pieces.
Thanks again!
I really enjoy Cody's Lab on YT and would like to have more background on some of the processes he undertakes.
