3 ms·

There is not actually much liquid inside an aluminum electrolytic capacitor. Cut one open yourself and find out! You're supposed to wear gloves, I guess, but I'

• londons_explore 3y ago
  The electrolyte composition is the 'secret sauce' by the capacitor maker. Thats what makes it dangerous - if you touch it and get sick, no doctor will know exactly what compounds were in it to make you sick, and therefore how to cure you.
  • tesseract 3y ago
    ... Electrolytic capacitor manufacturers have to publish Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) just like everyone else, disclosing exactly what's in there (with CAS numbers and everything), what the health and safety risks are, and giving advice on treating an exposure. They don't have to give the exact percentages or recipe for making the electrolyte, and they can omit mention of constituents that are known harmless (e.g. water), but they certainly can't put random dangerous chemicals in their products without saying so.
  • exmadscientist 3y ago
    > if you touch it and get sick, no doctor will know exactly what compounds were in it to make you sick, and therefore how to cure you. If that was a real problem, people would die a lot more often than they do, just from touching random things in the world! No, the capacitor organic electrolytics are things which are not really very bad (mostly glycol-y things and organic acid-y things, I think?) but which are best washed off your hands. That's all. There aren't any really nasty things in them, fortunately (and I have read enough RoHS/REACH/Prop65 crap to be confident of that, sadly).