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Comment by inferiorhuman | Hacker News Reader

  It's also in brake cleaner

It pays to check the (M)SDS. Chlorinated brake cleaner is nasty stuff, real dangerous if you're using it on something you want to weld. However, I haven't seen chlorinated brake cleaner in California since I was a kid. Lately they've been cracking down on the non-chlorinated stuff due to VOCs. The non-chlorinated stuff I use is acetone, naptha, heptane+n-heptane, and CO2.

Acetone is blissfully not so toxic but it is extremely volatile, which is both a safety and a practical concern. I bought a small flask of the stuff recently from the big box store and you could not buy it at the self-checkout.

The chlorinated stuff is just a better solvent. Dries faster, leaves less residue (than some non-chlorinated versions), and is better at dissolving the greasy funk. Generally it's not enough of an improvement, even if you have the chlorinated stuff at your disposal.

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> Acetone is blissfully not so toxic...

I'll say. Oak Ridge National Lab has this to say about the toxicity of acetone:

> Acetone (CAS No. 67-64-1) is a clear, colorless, highly flammable liquid with a vapor pressure of 182 mm Hg at 20C (Morgott, 1993). It is completely miscible in water and soluble in organics such as benzene and ethanol (ATSDR, 1994). Its log Kow has been estimated to be -0.24 (ATSDR, 1994). Acetone is used primarily as a solvent and chemical intermediate, and it is also found in some consumer products such as nail polish remover (Inoue, 1983; Kumai et al., 1983).

https://rais.ornl.gov/tox/profiles/acetone.html

Given a choice between the chlorinated stuff, and something one can drink half a shot glass of and not suffer any toxic effects, I'll take the acetone any day.

I generally buy my acetone online, BTW. It's relatively easy to buy small quantities of pure acetone, because it's sold as nail polish remover.

> Given a choice between the chlorinated stuff, and something one can drink half a shot glass of and not suffer any toxic effects, I'll take the acetone any day.

Fun fact: if you drink isopropyl alcohol, your body metabolises it (partly) to acetone, which you can smell and taste. But, well, don't drink either anyway. :-)

Well, even in California, you can buy pure acetone OTC – you just have to interact with a human cashier who probably won't even know why the self-checkout refuses to let you buy it. I don't care one way or another except that the big box stores try to push you towards the self-checkout lanes.

Nail polish remover, like non-ethyl alcohol, is likely to be adulterated (e.g. with scents or crap to soften your cuticles, etc.). Depending on how clean you need something to be it may be an issue (and you probably can find high test nail polish remover). I was removing these infernal stickers from cooking implements so I went with the big box store. Depending on what you're working with you may still need to wipe it down with isopropyl anyhow.

> Nail polish remover, like non-ethyl alcohol, is likely to be adulterated

Not if you buy the stuff that literally says "pure acetone," e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Onyx-Professional-Acetone-Remover-Fas...

I was going to suggest that the only "adulterant" likely to be in something labeled "pure acetone" would be water from the air, but Stack Exchange suggests differently: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/54341/acetone-...

Acetone bought from your local shop that sells car spare parts, tools, and whatnot is likely several orders of magnitude cheaper than the same acetone bought from the cosmetics department. I keep offering my bottle of acetone to my SO but she insist on using the cosmetics department version. ;)

I think many nail polish removers aren't pure, so you have to check. Usually hardware stores have cans of acetone without any additives.

This is a popular brake cleaner sold on Amazon [0] that I bought some time ago, I'm not sure but reading through the SDS it seems it does not contain TCE? It says it contains "Hydrocarbons, C6-C7, n-alkanes, isoalkanes, cyclics, <5% n-hexane"[1]

[0] https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B005510S9M/

[1] https://www.service.european-aerosols.com/en/products/presto...

I didn't look at the links, but from the ingredients list you posted, yes those are pure hydrocarbons, nothing chlorinated.

There are two common types of brake cleaner available in most of the United States: chlorinated and non-chlorinated. The big advantage of retail packaging is that it's typically in an aerosol can so you have the added perk of mechanical cleaning action. I typically use CRC brand stuff since it's easy to find, doesn't seem to harm most of the PA6/66 plastic under the hood, and works well. In not-California CRC markets the chlorinated brake cleaner with a red label and the non-chlorinated stuff with a green label. In California it's all non-chlorinated (potentially all low-VOC now too) despite the red/green cans having different SKUs. I suspect that the EU outlawed the chlorinated stuff a while back as they're typically more proactive than not-California.

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