Things I won't work with: the higher states of bromine (2019)
blogs.sciencemag.org
blogs.sciencemag.org
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-wor...
This is how you make people interested in more difficult topics
Then the blog goes into more and more dangerous stuff...
The silver lining is that the more dangerous a substance it, the lower the odds of it actually harming anybody, because everybody reacts like the author.
sometimes the students are also set ablaze, 20 at once is actually rather impressive
Here's a good starting point: 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-wo...
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.
Not saying chronic exposure can never have adverse effects
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/myth-ethidium-brom...
This is why it's a known mutagen with a long list of very specific, strident toxicity warnings. That's the organic cation, though; compared to that, the Br- anion is utterly benign. You're looking at the wrong hazard!
Br- is a standard counterion in human-approved drugs (those formulated as HBr salts).
https://www.google.com/search?q=hydrobromide+site:drugbank.c...
Sea salt should have a fair amount of bromide in it. Bromine can be produced commercially by bubbling chlorine gas through sea water.
I'll nip this in the bud and say "DNA particles" was definitely the wrong word.
You are correct, the Bromine here isn't really the problem; the fact that any intercalculation with DNA occurs is the main problem. Is it Bromine's fault? Not particularly, but it's an accessory in this instance. Based on anecdotal evidence it's common to the electrophoresis process.
My reason for bringing this up is just one of those relatable stories (/s) about why I also don't like working with Bromine (even if contextually it's not Bromine's fault, we love you Bromine!)
I assume you meant intercalation[1], right?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercalation_(biochemistry)
*Not actually as hot as lava, but wow does it feel like it
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.
Turns out the teacher had poured some bromine down a sink, along with something it reacted with.
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
If you can't do that you should be doing something else with your life. This isn't computing where nothing worse is at stake than money, usually.
The same chemistry lab had a sign warning us not to "pipette by mouth", but I actually do that today to transfer tardigrades. It gives you remarkable control over the volume transferred.
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.
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 =)
Who, just to be clear, was not being cavalier, but followed all the relevant precautions known at the time. They were just inadequate.
Most people are trained from day 1 that PPE is never perfect.
It is like seeing a dog go after a porcupine... the risk assessment sub-process just isn't enough for some folks =3
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.
There are much simpler, cleaner stories if you want to impart a message about the importance of PPE: Barry Weatherall was cleaning a pipe with sulphuric acid. He used PPE initially while performing the procedure, but removed it to do some paper work, and then went back to check on the progress without PPE. The acid exploded in his face and he become blind for life.[1]
It is a sad true story. Much cleaner than the Karen Wetterhahn one.
The message of the Karen Wetterhahn incident is "don't assume that just because you have PPE it is the right PPE for that task". While the message of the Barry Weatherall story is "wear your PPE".
1: https://nationalpost.com/news/in-the-blink-of-an-eye-adjusti...
It turned out they were doing "spring cleaning" and somebody accidentally jiggled an old bottle of ether in a fume hood, and unfortunately the old ether must have had some free radicals, which led to an explosion. It blew out all the windows in the room (which were 20-30 feet away) and the chemist was only saved because he was wearing safety equipment (he still had permanent scars on his face years later).
That room was later my office! The incident (as well as the investigation) is written up here: https://synapse.ucsf.edu/articles/2019/03/24/date-ucsf-histo...
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.
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
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...
> 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.
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!
I finished up by thinking "he linked to the reviews, because the product is no longer for sale". So I click through the link, nope. $11/bottle. And not soem Engrishy label, looks like I could find it on the shelf at Home Depot or Walmart. Seriously, wtf.
Trying that with 95% hydrogen peroxide would work exactly ONCE, and "disinfect" the user entirely from reality.
HF won't actually dissolve a corpse. It's not actually that strong of an acid; just fluoride is nasty stuff.
Do NOT stay in the server room (or armored personnel carrier) when the fire suppression system goes off. https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/177/1/108/4345530
One was something he said resembled a wok full of the usual suspects of strong acids. Overnight, the mixture was hygroscopic, so they'd start it heating up in the morning to dehydrate it and increase the concentration. To test if it was ready, they'd throw in a small piece of wood, about the size of a match. If it disintegrated on contact, it was ready. Then you could dip your glassware to clean it.
But, in another lab, they would use a small bottle of hydrofluoric acid at the bench, taking a layer off the glass at the same time. While the dangers of large exposures were well known, he did mention the nerve damage and it being highly annoying and painful if trace amounts got under your fingernails, a somewhat common injury of the lab that everyone simply tolerated.
He thought the latter was a more convenient arrangement.
I also have an interest in energetics. Florine is one of those chemicals you just got to respect. I know HF is used in the photoresist etch, and I'm interested in doing my own chip design. I realized that if I ever spilled HF on my, and the calcium cream didn't work, I'm better of just dying to anything other than HF. Iv heard its horrific to get on you in concentrated doses.
The price we pay for the small feature sizes on the wafer, and the increased density, in paid for in the usage of harsh chemicals.
That's 3 reactive back-to-back no-thank-you's.
Ha!
Or at least, for anyone who grew up on Jurassic Park: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WgQe68kF_8M&t=31s
EDIT: no, it's boric acid, B, not Br.
> you will at all times want to be suited up like you're going to going to spay a velociraptor
Wins teh Internets.
> 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.
Sums this whole thing up quite nicely, I'd say.
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-wor...
> "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-wor...
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.