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Speaking with my chemist's hat on… wimp. Seriously, there are any number of nasty things floating around a wet chemistry lab. Chromerge and piranha solutions (
by OopsCriticality 11y ago
Speaking with my chemist's hat on… wimp.
Seriously, there are any number of nasty things floating around a wet chemistry lab. Chromerge and piranha solutions (sometimes aqua regia) for cleaning glassware, various super acids and bases, pyrophoric organometallics, stuff that's oxygen or water or shock sensitive… the list goes on. HF is certainly bad, but it tends to get the respect it deserves and so is handled safely. I'm more worried about chronic occupational exposure to "safer" things like chloroform.
Edit: the one that really scares me? Anything solvated with DMSO. It dramatically increases absorption through the skin. I bet every chemist has a secret chemical fear.
Edit 2: oh, and peroxides. One idiot postdoc had a habit of buying THF without stabilizers (no need for him to do so), and storing them in the back of the chemicals cabinet where they were frequently forgotten. At least he had the decency to store them on the bottom shelf. So admittedly I have two fears, but I'll work with HF!
- AceJohnny2 11y ago> Edit 2: oh, and peroxides. Then you might be amused by his post about peroxide peroxides (just add more -O- links in the HOOH chain) http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/things_i_wont_work_with_peroxide_peroxides http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/thi...
- pixl97 11y agoDid someone say FOOF?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioxygen_difluoride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioxygen_difluoride
- AceJohnny2 11y agoDerek said FOOF! http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...
- jgamman 11y agospeaking with my chemist's hat on... crying 'wimp' is one of the cultural problems we have when it comes to health and safety.
- OopsCriticality 11y agoI was kidding. I however do think refusing to work with a uniquely useful substance because of the risks, without considering risk mitigation, is irrational and can impede good science.
- Laforet 11y agoDerek blogged about other (truly) fearsome stuff too such as FOOF http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...
- jgamman 11y agocool. thx for replying back - maybe i'm a bit sensitive about this sort of thing but i'm tired of seeing students put in dangerous situations and then if/when something bad happens they're labelled 'professionals' and their supervisor walks off scott free. once i got out of academia and did some real H&S training and assessments I was amazed at how badly I'd been trained over a decade or so of chem.
- OopsCriticality 11y agoI think we both agree that occupational health and safety, as it's generally practiced in academia, is an abomination; the sooner academia comes up to industry standards, the better. Reading in C&EN about completely preventable accidents that happen in the ivory tower is both frustrating and heartbreaking.
- refurb 11y agoSpeaking as a chemist as well, HF scares the crap out of me. There is the one story of the chemist who dumped a bottle of HF in his lap. Went to the hospital where they amputated his legs. He died anyways.
- dnautics 11y agothat's an HF solution, which derek says doesn't scare him.
- jszymborski 11y agoWas going to post peroxides here. Also, working in a biomedical lab studying cancer, we frequently solvate some nasty drugs (e.g DNA repair inhibitors) in DMSO... always gives me pause. Also generating lentivirus with some nasty payloads (commonly various protein knockdowns/shRNA, which reduces expression of a given protein, some very important to cell stability)
- Gibbon1 11y agoEvery time I read about peroxides it's about chemicals like ether that tend to spontaneously form them while sitting quietly in the storeroom. I'm glad I'm just an engineer working in an air conditioned office.
- amalcon 11y agoI've seen people applying DMSO to their joints as some kind of arthritis treatment. I can only assume that what these people buy is actually massively cut with water, or they'd have already been poisoned by whatever residue was on the skin at some point.
- jonlucc 11y agoAnything in DMSO? You'd have a hard time avoiding it in a cell bio lab; we dissolve everything in DMSO.
- OopsCriticality 11y agoYeah, that's when I was the most worried, when I was using stuff meant to muck with cell signaling solvated in DMSO. Be sure you're using the correct gloves! The "sensitive" nitrile and latex gloves typically found in biology labs don't offer good protection against DMSO.