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Comment by qiqitori | Hacker News Reader

Last night I somehow dreamed I had a hydrofluoric acid burn. Reading this thread I remembered there was this rust stain remover product on US Amazon that is 3% HF. https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B000LNQNM0/

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!

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Who knows what was left of that 3% HF after it was shipped leaking... Maybe it was just mildly spicy water when delivered, and the poor amazon warehouse workers got to have most of the fun.

I’m sure they have all the equipment on hand to provide proper first aid for the vast multitude of chemicals they stock. They would never sell anything unsafe, right?

I thought surely you must be joking when I clicked on the link. Then I thought, ok, I'm a high school flunky, and I must be confusing this with the "don't go within a million miles of" substance that Walter White used to dissolve corpses and the one that I've read about repeatedly over the years that is immediately poisonous to human life even if you spill it only on a fingertip. But nope the 1-star reviews make it clear that I'm not confused. Then I start wondering how this can even be shipped with regular parcel services...

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.

Concentration is the deciding factor - for instance, some folks use 3% hydrogen peroxide as a disinfectant mouthwash.

Trying that with 95% hydrogen peroxide would work exactly ONCE, and "disinfect" the user entirely from reality.

What concentration of hydrofluoric acid is safe as mouthwash?

Nobody's saying it won't kill you, just that it'll leave a corpse.

> Walter White used to dissolve corpses

HF won't actually dissolve a corpse. It's not actually that strong of an acid; just fluoride is nasty stuff.

On the other hand, HF is great at dissolving glass (silicon dioxide), which is something that most other acids won't do.

But it's great at dissolving bones, and it does that even if you just get it on your skin

The feeling of danger browsing that page trying to avoid accidentally clicking the "Buy" button.

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