Victorian Glass Fire Grenades (2020)
museumcrush.org
museumcrush.org
How much of modern longevity is sanitation, sterilization, and medicine, and how much is just not doing really, really dumb things anymore?
It sounds scary and serves as a good clickbait, but in reality it was not a big deal. This reaction is not quick, and if you have a fire that can burn at 300C while there's a significant amount of water vapor, then phosgene is not your biggest worry. And of course, liquid water from firefighting won't be hot enough.
Now, don't try to weld stuff that has been recently cleaned with brake cleaner fluid. That WILL produce enough phosgene to poison you.
What's the solvent in brake cleaner fluid that breaks down to produce COCl2?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_cleaner
> Chlorinated brake cleaner containing tetrachloroethylene will, on exposure to high temperatures (above 500 °F (260 °C)) or strong UV light, decompose into phosgene and hydrogen chloride, both of which are extremely dangerous if inhaled
So C2Cl4 - https://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.13837281.html
Oh, and this answer suggests that the reaction occurs with 'singlet' oxygen - https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/76185/what-is-... (very pretty picture of the intermediates!)
PERC has replaced CCl4 in drycleaning too as it's safer. Note it too has a similar odor to CCl4 — note my previous comment to kragen.
My opinion nowadays is to avoid inhaling the vapors of or exposing one's skin to any of these volatile cleaners, paint thinners etc. whether they're chlorinated hydrocarbons or not. Just assume them all to be dangerous.
Incidentally, the problem with chlorinated hydrocarbons turning into phosgene has been known for a century or more. I find it very strange that this info isn't an essential part of all trades training where such chemicals are likely to be encountered.
(I've been whingeing on HN previously about the inadequate and inappropriate training of the GP in chemistry. Yes, we teach chemistry at highschool as if everyone was going to progress to a degree in chemistry—such training is quickly forgotten if one doesn't become a chemist. We need to teach everyone about chemistry and how to handle chemicals they encounter in daily life and the likely dangers they pose.)
Anyhow, it's apparently not widely known to be as dangerous as it is, or perhaps people are just really lucky.
Look at it this way: all of these chlorinated hydrocarbons are highly volatile solvents, it only requires a few minutes in air for the solvents to evaporate. Similarly, liquid residue solvents in hidden away places such as in tubes etc. will be vaporized to gas with just a little heat and then forced out of the tubes leaving only a minuscule amount of remaining vapor. That should be the situation long before the solvents are broken down by the heat.
It would be informative to know the exact circumstances in the cases where phosgene was generated to the extent of causing injury. From my own experience in cleaning stuff with volatiles and then applying heat such as welding, I have difficulty in seeing how sufficient phosgene would be generated to cause harm.
I say that as someone who, when young, suffered a minor degree of cyanide (HCN) poisoning when doing photograpic processing in a sealed-off bathroom without ventilation, so since then I've been highly attuned to situations where toxic gasses are likely to build up (I previously mentioned this incident on HN ages ago).
Another incident: while not quite as dangerous as escaped phosgene, I had a vaguely similar incident when moving an old refrigerator sealed unit inside a shipping container full of other junk that made egress rather difficult. We broke a copper tube which released copious amounts of sulfur dioxide refrigerant and we couldn't get out quickly and thus suffered the consequences without too much drama. Right, SO2 isn't phosgene but there's was a damned side more of it here than I could ever envisage chlorinated hydrocarbons remaining after cleaning brakes (and one wouldn't do that in an enclosed space such as a shipping container)!
All that said, there is absolutely no excuse for all containers of volatile cleaning agents to not have large red warnings about the potential for phosgene to be generated in the presence high heat and to do the cleaning and welding in a well ventilated place (like outdoors)—and to ensure that all fluid has fully evaporated before welding, etc.
I'm not up to date on current cleaing products but I'd be surprised if there wasn't already a warning on them. If not, then the regulators have either lost the plot or have been grossly negligent.
The story seems to come from Journal of Accident and Emergency Medicine, 12 pp212-213 (1995)) as noted by https://www.isystemsweb.com/phosgene-gas/
To be fair, workplace safety has improved quite a bit - some of it thanks to regulation, some due to economic shifts (less mining, more office work). This improved the life expectancy of lower-class men.
But that aside, a lot of the gains in life expectancy have to do with very basic things - like flush toilets, along with generally improved standards of living.
If you don’t call alcohol poisoning a drug overdose, the stats get skewed to make the past look better.
~140,000 people die from excessive alcohol use in the U.S. each year, only ~2,000 of those are alcohol poisoning.
Alcohol is intrinsically ingrained in many if not most cultures.
I would consider drug overdoses dramatically different than car accidents. To the point, "dumb things" where you put deadly chemical in jar (fire extinguisher) is not the same as purposely injecting yourself or accidentally losing control of your vehicle.
For what it's worth, while drug fatalities are increasing (arguably there was an intentional act to start drugs, granted addition is less so):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_drug_overdose_de...
Vehicle fatalities are actually going down per year (and have been, on average, since the inception of the car)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
> But that aside, a lot of the gains in life expectancy have to do with very basic things - like flush toilets, along with generally improved standards of living.
I agree with you there, lots of minor things like vitamins, clean water, improved environmental controls, etc add up dramatically
The recent spike in drug overdoses has nearly nothing to do with people going out and making bad decisions (at least, not more than they've made over the last 50 years), but the fact that doctors and pharma companies, who ought to know better, keep putting fentanyl out into the world and making it as accessible as any other schedule 1 controlled substance. You know, like weed is a schedule 1 controlled substance (1).
According to NIDA (who are the don't-do-drugs-mmkay folks, responsible for gems like the egg ad and DARE), the lion's share of the spike in drug-related fatalities is due to instances where the drugs taken were "in combination with synthetic opioids other than methadone" (2). That's fentanyl, folks. As cheap and easy to get as it is lethal, and here we are putting it in hospitals because anesthesiologists think it's just the bee's knees.
So like, we're putting little microscopic landmines out there AND creating the circumstances for an unregulated black market that benefits from mixing said landmines into people's cocaine, which ostensibly they want because they have a really great business pitch they just gotta get out at 3am at the club (rather than a crippling addiction that's leading them to OD). IMHO, kinda similar to the fire grenades. No way bad shit ain't gonna happen and it's on us if we're surprised.
1 - https://www.dea.gov/drug-information/drug-scheduling
2 - https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...
The question I would put to you though is this: what is the value of what was said, and following that, what effect is your linguistic filter having on your acquisition of quality, reliable information? (realizing, as another commenter pointed out, that I made an error and that fentanyl is actually schedule II, which is another bonkers discussion entirely).
Like you, I'm not on the defensive or trying to attack you in any way. I just think it's a valuable skill to be able to synthesize information from a variety of contexts; especially in a world like ours, where combining information from various sources (cultures, communities, etc) can add up to more than the sum of the individual datum.
As for my usage of the language (so you don't think I got GPT to write this for me), it's a nod to the American writers of the 1960s-70s, who had to deal quite a bit with the fiction of the self-destructive "druggie", created by a political regime that was pushing a drug war.
That said, it is something to consider that my point could have been lost. I appreciate the feedback.
"so like, folks, you know like, heres the thing, here we are, puttin out there, the fact that we are actually,"
Its my bias of course, but I have never respected anyone who speaks that way, nor have I been given reasons to do so. If its not a critical context, its fine. But this was, so it came off very karen.
Who are you that pksebben or anybody else should care?
Edit: it isn’t constant, but has held surprisingly steady. https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption
carbon tet used daily for cleaning things was probably a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, for the reasons explained in the article, though its acute toxicity is quite low
carbon tet being thrown on a fire never was. if your house is on fire and you start breathing the combustion products, you are having a bad problem and will not go to the park today. you are about to die. you are still about to die even if you do not throw carbon tet on the fire
in fact, the ammonia gas from modern monoammonium phosphate fire extinguishers (once the powder gets on an actual fire and starts actually extinguishing things) will kill you quicker than carbon tet vapor
That's the key problem, which encouraged its use in cleaning (especially drycleaning). Its effects come much later, prolonged use rots the liver and kidneys and it's understood to be a carcinogen.
It's a damn good solvent though, I used to use it before the ban although I always avoided its vapors (as soon as I got the slightest whiff of its sweetish smell I'd move away or take evasive action).
Tragically, many people like its sweetish odor or at least they don't find it objectionable. No doubt its 'pleasantness' cost many lives.
Edit: incidentally, chloroalkanes such as trichloroethylene, C2HCl3, and 1,1,1-trichloroethane, CH3CCl3, and 1,1,2-Trichloroethane, CH2Cl—CHCl2, are also excellent solvents/cleaners and have similar sweetish smelling odors and can easily be confused with CCl4. They are all toxic in varying degrees (generally the fewer the hydrogen atoms the more toxic they are).
Trichloroethylene (aka trichlor, Trilene) also used to be used as a volatile anesthetic as well as a cleaner. It's much safer than CCl4 and that was known even when I was using it as solvent/cleaner. I thus took less precautions with it than with CCl4. I recall once cleaning some electronic equipment in a confined space and when I got up to exit my legs collapsed under me. In 30 sec or so I was back to normal.
> about 85% of the 90,000 deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_...
> where it was responsible for 85,000 deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosgene?wprov=sfti1#
The second links to the first which makes a completely different claim with similar looking numbers but cites no source.
What you mean things like absestos, chlorofluorocarbons, or unleaded gasoline, for example? Those are very modern and "really, really dumb".
I think you meant leaded gasoline? Both were inventions of one man Thomas Midgley, Jr.
He contracted polio and made a harness to assist himself to get out of bed and ended up accidentally strangling himself. What a guy.
I have a small room with some of my electronics and hobby stuff in it that is slightly more likely to cause a fire than elsewhere so I mounted one of these on the wall. I figure it may not work 100% but it can't hurt if a fire breaks out in that room and it works unattended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNhjfk9BTNA&pp=ygUcb3VyIG93b...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWA-M590bhY&pp=ygUcb3VyIG93b...
I'd never come across Our Own Devices previously so I'm very pleased you posted the links as I reckon the channel ought to be more widely known to HN's audience. What's truly impressive about the channel is the sheer diversity of its subject matter and the depth in which each subject is covered.
From my limited search I find Our Own Devices is authored by a Canadian, a former mechanical engineer turned author by the name of Gilles Messier. What's stunning about Messier is that he has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter that he covers in his videos. Whilst that's not surprising of itself—as many YouTube-ers have a vast knowledge of their subject—what's amazing about Messier is the sheer diversity and range of his knowledge which spreads over many fields.
This became obvious to me when viewing Rotary Phones: the Call of History when Messier made almost throwaway mention of a couple of obscure rather minor historical technical facts that would not be common knowledge to today's experts in telephony due to that they have been superseded and irrelevant for decades.
The only reason I know about them is because of my electronics background and that I'm considerably older than he is, thus I've accumulated historical knowledge that would be unfamiliar to younger viewers. Even then, the only reason that I'm aware of these facts is that I recall a decades-old conversation I had with a professional in telephony who mention them. (I won't bore you with the details except to say I wouldn't have expected Messier to be so very fluent and accurare in historical detail.)
Messier either has a photographic memory or he scrupulously researchs his topics, or both (he says he doesn't use a teleprompter when talking to camera so his memory must be excellent).
Every video I've watched on Our Own Devices I've found fascinating and informative, I always learn something new even with topics with which I am familiar. As a technology nerd I find this channel and Messier's presentation addictive.
If you rely on these and you end up dying, you can make a personal application for a full refund.
I think that color is better described as cobalt blue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_glass
Is holding in your hands a 1:1 mixture of carbon tetrachloride + carbon disulfide that you light on fire
It's a shame. It would probably be a good thing to keep over a domestic laser cutter or 3d printer.
Part of alumina requires use of a lot of extremely corrosive sodium hydroxide liquid, which eats through aluminium like the acid blood from Aliens. A neutralizing agent was developed that could be quickly applied to burns from the liquid, delivered via a pressurised can that workers would keep on their person at all times.
The material the pressurised can was made of? Aluminium, of course.
The sight of the safety superintendent swaggering around a chemical refinery with essentially a grenade attached to his belt for a couple of weeks before they realised the danger, was my first real eye-opener to how people can be promoted FAR past their level of competence.
For those who aren't familiar, they're more-or-less a firework: Cardboard shell with redundant fuses wrapped around it to activate a charge inside, and with fire-putter-outer powder (IIRC sodium bicarb, but maybe something else) instead of stars. This whole thing is then wrapped in thin plastic.
Operation is simple: Fuse lights, because fire. It burns fast, by design. It explodes. The area is covered in powder.
It might even work. (Might make things worse, too, but things are already awful by this point.)
There's something beautifully, wonderfully Thai about creating fireworks to throw at fires. Also, this video: https://www.elidefire.com/performance-testing
I, a dumb consumer, conflated my singular experience with actually-using a fire extinguisher (which was full of sodium bicarb, and this was important to determine immediately after use because food was involved nearby, on a holiday, with lots of people to feed) to actually-extinguish a fire one time many years ago with the contents of the AFO fireball "percussive fire alert" widget that I have in the printing room.
(FWIW: That actually-used fire extinguisher was from Kidde, and I trust its CAS-numbered labelling.)
The AFO fireball widget here doesn't really say what it has inside: The printing on the plastic wrapper just says that it is "filled up with harmless Environmental powder(91/155EEC)" [sic] which does not seem to mean anything by itself.
Thanks, Elbonia.
All barely-reliable references I can find (and all of which are vague) for the AFO device's actual contents point to monoammonium phosphate, which I discovered even while not using that compound as a search time.
And that's not so good for electronics.
---
But realistically, in the event of a fire that would actually set this thing off: The electronics are mostly toast anyway. Some may survive, some may not. Some may seem to survive but fail soon after, like the lifespan got shortened.
I've spent some time doing fire cleanup and restoration work. I've tried to rescue a fair number of electronic things that were on their way to the dumpster. It was mostly disappointment, interspersed with only occasional moments of seemingly-brief joy.
And that was actually a thing I considered of when I put this next to my printer a few years ago: I reasoned at that time that this will probably only activate if the bench (or room) is properly-aflame, but that it might help reduce total losses if it does activate.
The best case is that the printers (and other electronics) will get covered, nearly-enough, by the replacement-value rider on the insurance of my home's contents. They're all getting dumpstered and replaced with a check that should be in the right ballpark, and I can buy/built them again.
I also reasoned that the explosive fireball might buy a enough time to ultimately save the house that I'm in, so that added to its positivity. And that it might alert me if my usual smoke alarms did not: If I were sleeping or something, then a fucking explosion might wake me up in ways that loud high-frequency beeping might not.
But mostly, I reasoned that it might help save the cat from a printer fire, and that big dumb expensive cat is very important to me for all kinds of reasons.
So I still keep the firebomb near the experimental printer.
And like I said: Maybe it helps, and maybe it makes it worse. (I can't predict that without testing, but testing was is beyond my means. There's plenty of video of these things behaving well, and also of them behaving badly, but I'm not aware of anyone testing such a device with specifically a thing like a printer fire on a cluttered bench. I can imagine quite a lot, but that's not testing.)
yeah, map is good stuff, but not great for electronics
i am not an expert but i think the concern with map on electronics is not so much that the phosphoric acid will eat them (if they're hot enough to unleash the ammonia, as you said, they're toast) but more that it will dissolve in the water from the firehose to form a fairly acidic solution that may still corrode the electronics
... it could just be a cube?! But maybe there was already a cube shaped fire extinguishing device, and it wouldn't be:
> The Leading, Original, and Most Trusted Fire Extinguishing [Cube] brand