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.
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...
"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?
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.
Edit: it isn’t constant, but has held surprisingly steady. https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-consumption
If you don’t call alcohol poisoning a drug overdose, the stats get skewed to make the past look better.
Alcohol is intrinsically ingrained in many if not most cultures.
~140,000 people die from excessive alcohol use in the U.S. each year, only ~2,000 of those are alcohol poisoning.
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.