Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Here in Germany, you used to be able to buy chemicals at pharmacies. Then, the EU plus the usual German compliance-by-the-letter came along... the EU imposed serious controls on chemicals because many can be used to make bombs (e.g. acetone plus hydrogen peroxide yields APEX/TATP) or various illicit drugs. That legislation now not just requires a bullshit amount of paperwork for each transaction but also requires pharmacy staff to pass and renew a certification for dealing with chemicals. No, the actual doctor in pharmaceuticals that one needs to pass to open a pharmacy is not enough.

As a result, nearly all pharmacies here dropped the entire lines of making medication on-site and selling chemicals, because only the latter kept the former financially viable.

So, your only options left are either: a) buy from Amazon or eBay sellers that outright don't care about the German peculiarities or b) if you manage to qualify, buy from the usual selection of lab supply wholesalers. But something like "start a German NileRed channel", that's completely out of the question. The kind of stuff he buys, no way to get that without a commercial entity, and good luck getting that in place without at least a bachelor's degree in chemistry.

I agree with your general sentiment of regulatory dysfunction. But I'd like to point out that it's not so straightforward to purchase a lot of that stuff in the US either. Perhaps not quite as legally involved as the EU but still not simple.

You can also just make most things yourself. It isn't cost effective for a commercial entity (due to wages for highly educated professionals) but for a hobbyist, who cares? That of course calls into question the bulk of the regulatory approach. When I can pull up a youtube video of someone making solid rocket fuel with a plastic jug and a phone charger what was the point of requiring all the paperwork?

If you're lucky the recommended videos will even have footage of someone getting arrested for misusing something substantially similar.

Nile has even a masters in chemistry I think, and very likely at least a business entity. So might work. And even for him some things are hard to get, a Canada has similar restrictions.

If you want to order from a supplier typically the minimum bar is going to be a commercial entity and commercial warehouse space in an area zoned for light industrial where you have someone physically present during business hours to sign for deliveries. And that's just the minimum; you'll still run into other hurdles depending on the details.

He does but IIRC he started the channel when he was still a student and did his early videos in his parents' garage. Something like that is unachievable today.

> e.g. acetone plus hydrogen peroxide yields APEX/TATP

TIL, didn't know that. Acetone is right next to peroxide in the local household items store (in the Netherlands) over here. But a few aisles over you can also find CBD oil and melatonin, heavy duty painkillers like diclofenac, etc.

These are available here as well, but the concentrations (especially of the hydrogen peroxide) are far too low to be useful in bombmaking or most classic experiments involving it, and on top of that dilution from the factory, it's likely a bunch of the peroxide dissociated since it was manufactured. You need to concentrate the hydrogen peroxide up to be useful for more than cleaning blood stains, and that's pretty dangerous.

Ok but my friend lives in Seattle and like every walgreens reported having it in stock on their website. Maybe some of them are wrong but I don’t believe it.

The concentrations in the household cleaner section are way too low to be usable for anything but small scale household cleanups.

There's a reason why you can't get industrial strength cleaners in a Walmart - too many people would either seriously injure themselves because they don't know they actually need PPE or otherwise this stuff will break down their skin, because they mix it and make enough mustard gas to actually kill them, or because they break down their homes because guess what, a highly acidic cleaning agent and most kinds of stone don't mix.

Of course, yes, one can try to concentrate H2O2 but there's easier and less messy ways to off oneself than this.

Yeah I didn't really challenge my friend on this that much so it could have been that they couldn't find the thing they wanted.

his thing was mostly "pharmacies don't have _anything_" which just feels like a pretty spurious claim.

I hear your pain about the legislation. It sounds like it sucks.

> The kind of stuff he buys, no way to get that without a commercial entity, and good luck getting that in place without at least a bachelor's degree in chemistry.

NileRed has a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry with a minor in pharmacology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com