6 ms·

Things I won't work with: the higher states of bromine (2019)

385 points by fanf2 2y ago

KingOfCoders 2y ago
Enjoyed it a lot, sounded like alchemy on the way to create gold.
- labster 2y ago
  Kind of like alchemy. Except alchemy would kill you very slowly with heavy metal poisoning, and this stuff would kill you very very fast in multiple ways.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    If you want non lethal, I remember Lowe had an article about something that wasn't explosive or poisonous... but it got complaints from the people in neighboring buildings because of the smell. Edit: not sure this is the one I'm thinking of, because they were complaining about it in the neigboring village, but here's one: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-carbon-diselenide https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
    - scrlk 2y ago
      Thioacetone? > "Recently we found ourselves with an odour problem beyond our worst expectations. During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards away. Two of our chemists who had done no more than investigate the cracking of minute amounts of trithioacetone found themselves the object of hostile stares in a restaurant and suffered the humiliation of having a waitress spray the area around them with a deodorant. The odours defied the expected effects of dilution since workers in the laboratory did not find the odours intolerable ... and genuinely denied responsibility since they were working in closed systems. To convince them otherwise, they were dispersed with other observers around the laboratory, at distances up to a quarter of a mile, and one drop of either acetone gem-dithiol or the mother liquors from crude trithioacetone crystallisations were placed on a watch glass in a fume cupboard. The odour was detected downwind in seconds." https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-thioacetone https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
      - nottorp 2y ago
        Lovely, thanks. That's what I was thinking of.
        garaetjjte 2y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmAG8-V_WQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmAG8-V_WQY
phantomathkg 2y ago
As someone who have only A Level (i.e. high school) knowledge of Chemistry, every time I read "Things I won't work with" it always brings a smile to my face, as if those dangerous chemical are being synthesis in dodgy situation like those in cartoon.
paranoidrobot 2y ago
(2019) This is from Derek Lowe's wonderful "Things I won't work with" series from his long running blog. Even if you're not a chemistry person, it's written in an accessible way, and usually quite humorous way. I recommend his 2010 post on "FOOF" Dioxygen Difluoride from the same series. [1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-dioxygen-difluoride https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
- jajko 2y ago
  I know nothing from chemistry apart from high school stuff decades ago (and wasnt very good at it), but oh boy Derek knows how to write interesting stuff for laymen, read whole series since it gets quite regular mentions here. This is how you make people interested in more difficult topics
  - dylan604 2y ago
    My high school chemistry teacher used this approach, and I thank her for it. While maybe not at the same level of chemist, she did her best to make the subject much more approachable. My physics teacher had his humorous approach as well. I can still see his hand drawn sketches on the overhead in my mind.
- robocat 2y ago
  If you want to read an amazing book from someone who sails the other tack and lovingly creates rocket propellants: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
  - proaralyst 2y ago
    This is such a good book, and it was very accessible as someone with little chemistry education.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - 2y ago
raverbashing 2y ago
A thought about this: Maybe in some far away galaxy, in a planet with much lower temperatures, intelligent life has evolved based on reactions like these, and some chemist there is writing about how long chains of carbon and hydrogen are for the most part useless as they're solid and inert at their temperature
isoprophlex 2y ago
Anhydrous redistilled hydrogen fluoride? No thanks! Mind you: this is the stuff that, on skin contact, doesn't just burn you. It will immediately move through your skin to fuck up your nervous system, your organs, and your electrolyte balance to give you a heart attack. If this synthesis were to kill me somehow, I'd rather blow myself up than get sprayed with HF. Refer to [1] for more, unless you're easily disgusted... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid_burn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid_burn
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  It's the first thing in the series: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-touch-1 https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-tou... > HF has actually been used right out of the cylinder for a long time in Merrifield peptide synthesizers. It's the traditional way to cleave the peptide off the resin at the final step, so there are actually a lot of people who've used the stuff. But it's in a dedicated apparatus that is (that had better be) well sealed, and people treat it with due respect. At a former employer of mine, there was an accident with one of these machines right before I joined the company. The shout "HF LEAK!" went out into the halls, and I'm told that the whole area set a never-to-be-equaled evacuation record.
- qiqitori 2y ago
  Last night I somehow dreamed I had a hydrofluoric acid burn. Reading this thread I remembered there was this rust stain remover product on US Amazon that is 3% HF. https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B000LNQNM0/ https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B000LNQNM0/ It's got great reviews (and I'm inclined to believe that this product will do the job). There's one 1-star review that stands out though: "Simply put. It doesn’t work and it was shipped leaking." Yikes!
  - isoprophlex 2y ago
    Who knows what was left of that 3% HF after it was shipped leaking... Maybe it was just mildly spicy water when delivered, and the poor amazon warehouse workers got to have most of the fun.
maxbond 2y ago
Tangentially, once I watched an entertaining listicle video about the most dangerous chemicals on a popular science YouTube channel. Years later, I stumbled on "In the Pipeline" (via HN), and realized the listicle was plagiarized from "Things I won't work with." I don't know if there's a lesson there, but that's what happened.
mrandish 2y ago
This series by Derek Lowe is absolutely some of the funniest hard science writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading. That may sound like a low bar but make no mistake, this is truly great stuff. I've read the entire series of 33 articles going back over two decades and I only wish there was more (Derek is regular columnist but only occasionally posts new entries in this series). Here's a good starting point: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-here-compound-needs-some-hydrogen-peroxide https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-here-compound... and a direct link to an index of just his "Things I Won't Work With" posts: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-work-with https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo...
tanepiper 2y ago
I once remember sitting in a Physics class, they shared with Chemistry and as we're sitting there one of the chemistry teachers started clearing up - not sure what happened exactly but all of a sudden there's a bang, red smoke and everyone starts coughing - we had to evacuate the entire section. Turns out the teacher had poured some bromine down a sink, along with something it reacted with.
- HarryHirsch 2y ago
  That is a strong indictment of US teacher training. (One assumes that's the US, because teachers are remarkbly untrained over there.) Everyone knows you deactivate bromine and chlorine with thiosulfate or sulfite and only then chuck it down the drain.
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    This could also be the common error where someoone tries to pipet bromine like it was an ordinary liquid: Open the bottle (under the hood), there's not that much red smoke coming out, dip the pipet into the dark liquid, pull in a few mLs, looks normal, almost like you could precisely dispense small amounts into the nearby target apparatus. Lift the pipet slowly out of the source bottle, and carefully position it over the waiting reciever flask. Don't be too concerned about exact amounts to be dispensed any more, it can be seen that precision with bromine is not as ideal compared to something like pipetting alcohol, where you commonly lose a few drops anyway. After all, immediately when you withdrew the pipet from the bromine bottle, the entire contents of the pipet had spewed out from its own gas pressure, into the inside of the hood. Don't worry about the state of your reaction, not a drop of bromine landed where you had intended. All you can do if you have your wits about you is to hold your breath, carefully put the stopper back on the bromine bottle (without knocking the whole thing over) and fully evacuate, basically following out behind everyone else in other parts of the lab who knew there was a problem as soon as you did, just from the smell. And that's with the best of hoods. edit: not my downvote
    - HarryHirsch 2y ago
mnemotronic 2y ago
Apparently organic chemists speak a different kind of English.
moi2388 2y ago
What an absolute joy to read. I don’t know all the terms used but my god does this make me want to learn more about chemistry
G3rn0ti 2y ago
> well, to the stuff described in this new paper., from Konrad Seppelt at the Freie Universität Berlin. Prof. Konrad Seppelt became kind of famous in his community for creating various exotic Xenon substances including the world’s first compound between a noble gas and „noble“ metal. He has been working with elemental fluorine for decades — so I guess he knows how to deal with dangerous stuff.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Xenon difluoride is in fact not hard to make: mix xenon and fluorine and expose to sunlight (or an artificial UV source). It just wasn't done for the longest time because of preconceptions.
teppic 2y ago
> …you will at all times want to be suited up like you're going to going to spay a velociraptor. Ha!
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Typo aside, that's one of the more clarifying similies I've ever read. Or at least, for anyone who grew up on Jurassic Park: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WgQe68kF_8M&t=31s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WgQe68kF_8M&t=31s
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
There are a few things that have a pucker-factor beyond most sane peoples limit. A few people do die every year from accidents handling hazardous chemicals. Some have a bit of time to regret their mistakes, as they say goodbye to friends and colleagues. Every clown that gets cavalier with safety rules should read the story of Karen Wetterhahn. I can't think of a worse accident except maybe Louis Slotin, as it reads like it is strait out of horror fiction. Some scientists literally die for their work. Have a wonderful day =)
- inimino 2y ago
  > Wetterhahn Who, just to be clear, was not being cavalier, but followed all the relevant precautions known at the time. They were just inadequate.
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    There was some controversy over the details, but it was a terrible way to go. Most people are trained from day 1 that PPE is never perfect.
    - Arrath 2y ago
      PPE is on the bottom of the hierarchy of controls for good reason.
      - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
        Exactly, I lost count of the number of times I've done a PSA on YT explaining most carbide dust is tumorigenic. It is like seeing a dog go after a porcupine... the risk assessment sub-process just isn't enough for some folks =3
- krisoft 2y ago
  > Every clown that gets cavalier with safety rules should read the story of Karen Wetterhahn. I don't understand what you are saying. Karen Wetterhahn meticulously observed all known precautions at the time. Her death was terrible, but as far as we know zero "clowning" was involved. Shouldn't someone who "gets cavalier with safety rules" study cases where someone gets hurt after they "gets cavalier with safety rules"? There is plenty of those. The lesson of the Karen Wetterhahn incident is that "Do everything right and by the book? The gru can steal eat your face." Not really the thing clowns should focus on.
sierra1011 2y ago
I used to work in a genetics lab, and had to prepare trays of gel to visualise DNA tests (PCR testing to identify HLA alleles: effectively like finding someone's blood type, but for their immune system). The compound in the gel that attaches itself to the DNA particles and makes it so we can visualise the results by UV fluorescence is Ethidium Bromide [1], one of the lower state Bromine salts the article mentions. The way the electrophoresis gels are (were, by me and the other workers) prepared is by... microwaving a flask with it in. Repeatedly taking it out as it gets hotter to mix it. Usually involving some release of steam. Which includes a small amount of the bromide. Fine in small doses, but when you do it multiple times a day, 5 days a week, 45 weeks of the year... To this day I wonder how much of an effect it's going to have on me and my colleagues at the time. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethidium_bromide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethidium_bromide
- Zeratoss 2y ago
  The author actually has an article on that specific compound. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/myth-ethidium-bromide https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/myth-ethidium-brom... Not saying chronic exposure can never have adverse effects
- fifnir 2y ago
  My PhD supervisor would wash his teeth over the sink where we'd rinse all the gel preparation tools. He got throat cancer in his 50s and died soon after my PhD defense.
  - voidmain0001 2y ago
    So, are you suggesting that the gel was the cause of the cancer for the supervisor? If so, was that sink’s drain connected to a diverter such that the waste didn’t enter the typical sewage system?
    - sierra1011 2y ago
      If you have to ask, I think you already know the answer
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
He's a great writer. > you will at all times want to be suited up like you're going to going to spay a velociraptor Wins teh Internets.
coisasdavida 2y ago
I had read his post about Dengue a few days back, but hadn't looked at other posts, this guy is hilarious! The two articles about not enough nitro groups are great!
jokoon 2y ago
Isn't bromine used for anti cockroach gel? EDIT: no, it's boric acid, B, not Br.
drunkonvinyl 2y ago
I love all of these. I have practically memorized this one: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...
HarryHirsch 2y ago
PSA: try the Chemical Force Youtube channel. It is run by a crazy fellow who demonstrates all sorts of esoteric and highly exothermic inorganic chemistry.
mastersummoner 2y ago
"it inevitably explodes" Sums this whole thing up quite nicely, I'd say.
water-data-dude 2y ago
Here’s where the broken link from the first paragraph should go (I’m pretty sure): https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/not-do-bromine https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/not-do-bromine
- DylanSp 2y ago
  Yep, that's it. A lot of links to other blog posts on older posts are broken, but you can usually change the "blogsdev" subdomain to "blogs" and it'll work.
- jprete 2y ago
  That story is bonkers. I don't know how any student of chemistry mistakes a rocky crumbly cream-colored solid for an extremely hazardous red-orange liquid with a literal aura of evil wafting off of it.
RadicalEllis 2y ago
Wait until he hears about the even higher states of Iodine
- gus_massa 2y ago
  I have a specialization in Chemistry in my high school and we worked with Iodine and Bromide. IIRC Iodine is weak enough to be use as a desinfectant. We used Bromide only oncde, probably disolved in carbon tetrachloride. A drop fell on my skin and it started to inch/hurt inmediately. I washed it imediately. It was not bad, just a whiter spot in the skin and some inching for a few days. I'm more afraid of Bromide than Iodine.
jprete 2y ago
I always enjoy Derek Lowe's "Things I won't work with", but I have to admit they're getting a little stale for me (although of course this was from 2019 and it wasn't stale then). A writer can use the structure of their writing and word choices to hit certain emotional beats, and Lowe is quite good at this. If the actual content isn't quite substantial enough, though, the structural elements ring hollow to me because I've seen a lot of them. It's directly analogous to clickbait titles, and also the subtle increase in head size, eye size, and emotional affect in YouTube thumbnails. The structure is used to encourage a level of emotional reaction in the consumer that the content of the title and/or thumbnail can't support in a more realistic style. But it starts to grate after a while.
yread 2y ago
Is there "Things I don't work with" series for programming? Alpha-quality compilers, non-ACID databases, legacy code full of race conditions, CSS (jk),...
- chopin 2y ago
  Aspect oriented programming.
60secs 2y ago
> "bromine fluorine dioxide" That's 3 reactive back-to-back no-thank-you's.
AstroJetson 2y ago
One of his articles has this line that is a personal favorite: > I know that sounds like the guy at the pet store packing a starved Komodo dragon into the carrier with your new dog, just to calm him down some.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

385 points by fanf2 2y ago

KingOfCoders 2y ago

Enjoyed it a lot, sounded like alchemy on the way to create gold.

labster 2y ago
Kind of like alchemy. Except alchemy would kill you very slowly with heavy metal poisoning, and this stuff would kill you very very fast in multiple ways.
- nottorp 2y ago
  If you want non lethal, I remember Lowe had an article about something that wasn't explosive or poisonous... but it got complaints from the people in neighboring buildings because of the smell. Edit: not sure this is the one I'm thinking of, because they were complaining about it in the neigboring village, but here's one: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-carbon-diselenide https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
  - scrlk 2y ago
    Thioacetone? > "Recently we found ourselves with an odour problem beyond our worst expectations. During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards away. Two of our chemists who had done no more than investigate the cracking of minute amounts of trithioacetone found themselves the object of hostile stares in a restaurant and suffered the humiliation of having a waitress spray the area around them with a deodorant. The odours defied the expected effects of dilution since workers in the laboratory did not find the odours intolerable ... and genuinely denied responsibility since they were working in closed systems. To convince them otherwise, they were dispersed with other observers around the laboratory, at distances up to a quarter of a mile, and one drop of either acetone gem-dithiol or the mother liquors from crude trithioacetone crystallisations were placed on a watch glass in a fume cupboard. The odour was detected downwind in seconds." https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-thioacetone https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...
    - nottorp 2y ago
      Lovely, thanks. That's what I was thinking of.
      - garaetjjte 2y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmAG8-V_WQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmAG8-V_WQY

phantomathkg 2y ago

As someone who have only A Level (i.e. high school) knowledge of Chemistry, every time I read "Things I won't work with" it always brings a smile to my face, as if those dangerous chemical are being synthesis in dodgy situation like those in cartoon.

paranoidrobot 2y ago

(2019) This is from Derek Lowe's wonderful "Things I won't work with" series from his long running blog. Even if you're not a chemistry person, it's written in an accessible way, and usually quite humorous way. I recommend his 2010 post on "FOOF" Dioxygen Difluoride from the same series. [1] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-dioxygen-difluoride https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-wor...

jajko 2y ago
I know nothing from chemistry apart from high school stuff decades ago (and wasnt very good at it), but oh boy Derek knows how to write interesting stuff for laymen, read whole series since it gets quite regular mentions here. This is how you make people interested in more difficult topics
- dylan604 2y ago
  My high school chemistry teacher used this approach, and I thank her for it. While maybe not at the same level of chemist, she did her best to make the subject much more approachable. My physics teacher had his humorous approach as well. I can still see his hand drawn sketches on the overhead in my mind.
robocat 2y ago
If you want to read an amazing book from someone who sails the other tack and lovingly creates rocket propellants: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
- proaralyst 2y ago
  This is such a good book, and it was very accessible as someone with little chemistry education.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 2y ago

raverbashing 2y ago

A thought about this: Maybe in some far away galaxy, in a planet with much lower temperatures, intelligent life has evolved based on reactions like these, and some chemist there is writing about how long chains of carbon and hydrogen are for the most part useless as they're solid and inert at their temperature

isoprophlex 2y ago

Anhydrous redistilled hydrogen fluoride? No thanks! Mind you: this is the stuff that, on skin contact, doesn't just burn you. It will immediately move through your skin to fuck up your nervous system, your organs, and your electrolyte balance to give you a heart attack. If this synthesis were to kill me somehow, I'd rather blow myself up than get sprayed with HF. Refer to [1] for more, unless you're easily disgusted... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid_burn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid_burn

thaumasiotes 2y ago
It's the first thing in the series: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-touch-1 https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-tou... > HF has actually been used right out of the cylinder for a long time in Merrifield peptide synthesizers. It's the traditional way to cleave the peptide off the resin at the final step, so there are actually a lot of people who've used the stuff. But it's in a dedicated apparatus that is (that had better be) well sealed, and people treat it with due respect. At a former employer of mine, there was an accident with one of these machines right before I joined the company. The shout "HF LEAK!" went out into the halls, and I'm told that the whole area set a never-to-be-equaled evacuation record.
qiqitori 2y ago
Last night I somehow dreamed I had a hydrofluoric acid burn. Reading this thread I remembered there was this rust stain remover product on US Amazon that is 3% HF. https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B000LNQNM0/ https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B000LNQNM0/ It's got great reviews (and I'm inclined to believe that this product will do the job). There's one 1-star review that stands out though: "Simply put. It doesn’t work and it was shipped leaking." Yikes!
- isoprophlex 2y ago
  Who knows what was left of that 3% HF after it was shipped leaking... Maybe it was just mildly spicy water when delivered, and the poor amazon warehouse workers got to have most of the fun.

maxbond 2y ago

Tangentially, once I watched an entertaining listicle video about the most dangerous chemicals on a popular science YouTube channel. Years later, I stumbled on "In the Pipeline" (via HN), and realized the listicle was plagiarized from "Things I won't work with." I don't know if there's a lesson there, but that's what happened.

mrandish 2y ago

This series by Derek Lowe is absolutely some of the funniest hard science writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading. That may sound like a low bar but make no mistake, this is truly great stuff. I've read the entire series of 33 articles going back over two decades and I only wish there was more (Derek is regular columnist but only occasionally posts new entries in this series). Here's a good starting point: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-here-compound-needs-some-hydrogen-peroxide https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/what-here-compound... and a direct link to an index of just his "Things I Won't Work With" posts: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-work-with https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo...

tanepiper 2y ago

I once remember sitting in a Physics class, they shared with Chemistry and as we're sitting there one of the chemistry teachers started clearing up - not sure what happened exactly but all of a sudden there's a bang, red smoke and everyone starts coughing - we had to evacuate the entire section. Turns out the teacher had poured some bromine down a sink, along with something it reacted with.

HarryHirsch 2y ago
That is a strong indictment of US teacher training. (One assumes that's the US, because teachers are remarkbly untrained over there.) Everyone knows you deactivate bromine and chlorine with thiosulfate or sulfite and only then chuck it down the drain.
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  This could also be the common error where someoone tries to pipet bromine like it was an ordinary liquid: Open the bottle (under the hood), there's not that much red smoke coming out, dip the pipet into the dark liquid, pull in a few mLs, looks normal, almost like you could precisely dispense small amounts into the nearby target apparatus. Lift the pipet slowly out of the source bottle, and carefully position it over the waiting reciever flask. Don't be too concerned about exact amounts to be dispensed any more, it can be seen that precision with bromine is not as ideal compared to something like pipetting alcohol, where you commonly lose a few drops anyway. After all, immediately when you withdrew the pipet from the bromine bottle, the entire contents of the pipet had spewed out from its own gas pressure, into the inside of the hood. Don't worry about the state of your reaction, not a drop of bromine landed where you had intended. All you can do if you have your wits about you is to hold your breath, carefully put the stopper back on the bromine bottle (without knocking the whole thing over) and fully evacuate, basically following out behind everyone else in other parts of the lab who knew there was a problem as soon as you did, just from the smell. And that's with the best of hoods. edit: not my downvote
  - HarryHirsch 2y ago

mnemotronic 2y ago

Apparently organic chemists speak a different kind of English.

moi2388 2y ago

What an absolute joy to read. I don’t know all the terms used but my god does this make me want to learn more about chemistry

G3rn0ti 2y ago

> well, to the stuff described in this new paper., from Konrad Seppelt at the Freie Universität Berlin. Prof. Konrad Seppelt became kind of famous in his community for creating various exotic Xenon substances including the world’s first compound between a noble gas and „noble“ metal. He has been working with elemental fluorine for decades — so I guess he knows how to deal with dangerous stuff.

pfdietz 2y ago
Xenon difluoride is in fact not hard to make: mix xenon and fluorine and expose to sunlight (or an artificial UV source). It just wasn't done for the longest time because of preconceptions.

teppic 2y ago

> …you will at all times want to be suited up like you're going to going to spay a velociraptor. Ha!

ethbr1 2y ago
Typo aside, that's one of the more clarifying similies I've ever read. Or at least, for anyone who grew up on Jurassic Park: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WgQe68kF_8M&t=31s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WgQe68kF_8M&t=31s
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

There are a few things that have a pucker-factor beyond most sane peoples limit. A few people do die every year from accidents handling hazardous chemicals. Some have a bit of time to regret their mistakes, as they say goodbye to friends and colleagues. Every clown that gets cavalier with safety rules should read the story of Karen Wetterhahn. I can't think of a worse accident except maybe Louis Slotin, as it reads like it is strait out of horror fiction. Some scientists literally die for their work. Have a wonderful day =)

inimino 2y ago
> Wetterhahn Who, just to be clear, was not being cavalier, but followed all the relevant precautions known at the time. They were just inadequate.
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  There was some controversy over the details, but it was a terrible way to go. Most people are trained from day 1 that PPE is never perfect.
  - Arrath 2y ago
    PPE is on the bottom of the hierarchy of controls for good reason.
    - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
      Exactly, I lost count of the number of times I've done a PSA on YT explaining most carbide dust is tumorigenic. It is like seeing a dog go after a porcupine... the risk assessment sub-process just isn't enough for some folks =3
krisoft 2y ago
> Every clown that gets cavalier with safety rules should read the story of Karen Wetterhahn. I don't understand what you are saying. Karen Wetterhahn meticulously observed all known precautions at the time. Her death was terrible, but as far as we know zero "clowning" was involved. Shouldn't someone who "gets cavalier with safety rules" study cases where someone gets hurt after they "gets cavalier with safety rules"? There is plenty of those. The lesson of the Karen Wetterhahn incident is that "Do everything right and by the book? The gru can steal eat your face." Not really the thing clowns should focus on.

sierra1011 2y ago

I used to work in a genetics lab, and had to prepare trays of gel to visualise DNA tests (PCR testing to identify HLA alleles: effectively like finding someone's blood type, but for their immune system). The compound in the gel that attaches itself to the DNA particles and makes it so we can visualise the results by UV fluorescence is Ethidium Bromide [1], one of the lower state Bromine salts the article mentions. The way the electrophoresis gels are (were, by me and the other workers) prepared is by... microwaving a flask with it in. Repeatedly taking it out as it gets hotter to mix it. Usually involving some release of steam. Which includes a small amount of the bromide. Fine in small doses, but when you do it multiple times a day, 5 days a week, 45 weeks of the year... To this day I wonder how much of an effect it's going to have on me and my colleagues at the time. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethidium_bromide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethidium_bromide

Zeratoss 2y ago
The author actually has an article on that specific compound. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/myth-ethidium-bromide https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/myth-ethidium-brom... Not saying chronic exposure can never have adverse effects
fifnir 2y ago
My PhD supervisor would wash his teeth over the sink where we'd rinse all the gel preparation tools. He got throat cancer in his 50s and died soon after my PhD defense.
- voidmain0001 2y ago
  So, are you suggesting that the gel was the cause of the cancer for the supervisor? If so, was that sink’s drain connected to a diverter such that the waste didn’t enter the typical sewage system?
  - sierra1011 2y ago
    If you have to ask, I think you already know the answer

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

He's a great writer. > you will at all times want to be suited up like you're going to going to spay a velociraptor Wins teh Internets.

coisasdavida 2y ago

I had read his post about Dengue a few days back, but hadn't looked at other posts, this guy is hilarious! The two articles about not enough nitro groups are great!

jokoon 2y ago

Isn't bromine used for anti cockroach gel? EDIT: no, it's boric acid, B, not Br.

drunkonvinyl 2y ago

I love all of these. I have practically memorized this one: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-yo...

HarryHirsch 2y ago

PSA: try the Chemical Force Youtube channel. It is run by a crazy fellow who demonstrates all sorts of esoteric and highly exothermic inorganic chemistry.

mastersummoner 2y ago

"it inevitably explodes" Sums this whole thing up quite nicely, I'd say.

water-data-dude 2y ago

Here’s where the broken link from the first paragraph should go (I’m pretty sure): https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/not-do-bromine https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/not-do-bromine

DylanSp 2y ago
Yep, that's it. A lot of links to other blog posts on older posts are broken, but you can usually change the "blogsdev" subdomain to "blogs" and it'll work.
jprete 2y ago
That story is bonkers. I don't know how any student of chemistry mistakes a rocky crumbly cream-colored solid for an extremely hazardous red-orange liquid with a literal aura of evil wafting off of it.

RadicalEllis 2y ago

Wait until he hears about the even higher states of Iodine

gus_massa 2y ago
I have a specialization in Chemistry in my high school and we worked with Iodine and Bromide. IIRC Iodine is weak enough to be use as a desinfectant. We used Bromide only oncde, probably disolved in carbon tetrachloride. A drop fell on my skin and it started to inch/hurt inmediately. I washed it imediately. It was not bad, just a whiter spot in the skin and some inching for a few days. I'm more afraid of Bromide than Iodine.

jprete 2y ago

I always enjoy Derek Lowe's "Things I won't work with", but I have to admit they're getting a little stale for me (although of course this was from 2019 and it wasn't stale then). A writer can use the structure of their writing and word choices to hit certain emotional beats, and Lowe is quite good at this. If the actual content isn't quite substantial enough, though, the structural elements ring hollow to me because I've seen a lot of them. It's directly analogous to clickbait titles, and also the subtle increase in head size, eye size, and emotional affect in YouTube thumbnails. The structure is used to encourage a level of emotional reaction in the consumer that the content of the title and/or thumbnail can't support in a more realistic style. But it starts to grate after a while.

yread 2y ago

Is there "Things I don't work with" series for programming? Alpha-quality compilers, non-ACID databases, legacy code full of race conditions, CSS (jk),...

chopin 2y ago
Aspect oriented programming.

60secs 2y ago

> "bromine fluorine dioxide" That's 3 reactive back-to-back no-thank-you's.

AstroJetson 2y ago

One of his articles has this line that is a personal favorite: > I know that sounds like the guy at the pet store packing a starved Komodo dragon into the carrier with your new dog, just to calm him down some.

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