5 ms·

If boiling and filtering is impossible to clean, well that means their water table is screwed for decades, no? Pretty much abandon the area or risk cancer. "F

• danielharan 13y ago
  That was my first thought too. According to http://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1uunyw/4methylcyclohexane_methanol/ http://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1uunyw/4methylcyc... however: "The material is lighter than water, so it's going to float on top."
  • medium 13y ago
    It's water soluble- this chemical cannot simple be skimmed from the surface like an oil.
    • sghodas 13y ago
      Actually, it's not very water soluble at all. It's a large cyclohexane that's relatively non-polar (the first comment in that reddit link agrees). Approximately 5000 gallons of the chemical spilled into the river, so there likely isn't very much of the chemical mixed in with the water. Most likely not enough to seriously harm anyone.
      • medium 13y ago
        It's not insoluble, it is up to 3% soluble. "Most likely not enough to harm anyone." For some reason the state has declared it a federal disaster? check out this green ice- look, it's not soluble! Fine to drink! http://i.imgur.com/pzBsLRP.jpg http://i.imgur.com/pzBsLRP.jpg
        • sghodas 13y ago
          Its solubility maxes out at 3%. ~5000 gallons in a river is hardly enough to get to those levels. The news is reporting that the concentration is about 3ppm. 3ppm of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol is about 0.021g of the chemical in 1L of water. The lowest LD50 for ingesting the chemical I've found is 800mg/kg. This means you'd have to drink 3086L of water for it to be lethal. The LD50 for skin contact is at least double the ingestion LD50. That being said, I'm not going to take the risk, and I've only used water out of water bottles since this started.
          • mikeyouse 13y ago
            LD50 is fairly useless as it gives no indication of the toxicity of lower levels of the substance. It takes a large volume for some chemicals to kill you, but a much smaller amount can make your life very unpleasant. The NIH has much more information about methylcyclohexanol here: http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+2910* http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@ter... Edit -* The NIH link is to a 4-methylcyclohexanol (CAS: 589-91-3), not to 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (CAS: 34885-03-5), a similar but distinct compound.
            • sghodas 13y ago
              That's a good point. It doesn't appear to be particularly dangerous at low levels - just unpleasant.
            • maxerickson 13y ago
              methylcyclohexanol and 4-methylcyclohexane methanol are different compounds.
              • mikeyouse 13y ago
                That damn extra carbon. Any idea why the Wiki article gets the oxygen / hydrogen counts wrong? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-methylcyclohexanemethanol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-methylcyclohexanemethanol]
      • ams6110 13y ago
        5000 gallons? That's not much, in the context of a river. I'd guess this won't turn out to be a long term big deal.
• jeffreyg 13y ago
  It completely depends on the type of chemical. Your scenario imagines something like radiation. Perhaps the chemical isn't incredibly toxic and can be flushed out. If someone spilled bleach you wouldn't be able to boil or filter it out but you could dilute it to where it's safe for consumption.
  • maxerickson 13y ago
    City of St Albans water, mentioned in the story as safe, appears do be drawn from the Kanawha, downstream of where the Elk River flows in. So yeah, dilution appears to be the solution (really, the problem seems to be that one treatment plant drew in a large quantity of contaminated water).