Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride
pipeline.corante.com
pipeline.corante.com
I'm much happier now with nothing more serious than RSI to worry about.
Anyone who doubts this can happen should read about Karen Wetterhahn [1], who was killed in 1996 by a couple of drops of dimethylmercury that went through her glove. Another nasty chemical to avoid.
The "dimethyl" is not what it's important.
We'd carry gas masks with us constantly. I had to wear an acid proof suit in 105 degree heat. Geiger counter checks in and out the door.
I ended up breaking my ankle playing basketball and was forced to stay in a trailer so that my cast wouldn't get contaminated with uranium. Since I couldn't do my regular engineering stuff, I had to program stuff on computers the rest of the summer. Much better :) Changed my life forever.
I recall one time happening to see two other students applying solutions to the faucets handles of one of the lab desk sinks after a lab, because they thought it would be a funny prank upon whoever next used that sink.
Other times, stuff gets spilled by people who don't know better, don't understand the resulting risk, and/or just don't care enough to "do the right thing". And so inadequate cleanup leaves traces for others to stumble through, likely with know knowledge of the problem.
In my subsequent life, outside of a lab, I've repeatedly encountered significant health risks created by as well as ignored and/or abandoned by people who "don't know" or "don't care".
In broader life, buildings are full of lead, asbestos, and everything else, and putative penalties aside, it's basically "buyer beware" as far as inheriting someone else's problem (inheriting to your own personal liability and financial risk, not to mention possible health risks).
As much as "stuff I won't work with", I've developed an attitude of "people I won't work with".
There is a chemical compound called MPTP. It's directly toxic to dopamine neurons. They only discovered it when an underground chemist accidentally made it when try to synthesize a synthetic heroin (for lack of a better term).
I remember a chemist on the East Coast went back and looked at the structure and realized the stuff he had be working on had that active core. He had worked on it for 5+ years.
The problem is, you don't get symptoms of Parkinson's unless you've lost close to 80% of your neurons. I'm sure that East Coast chemist is dam near guaranteed to get Parkinson's at an early age.
Excellent, absolute hoot. I've only had to use hydroflouric acid once (leather apron, double gloves, goggles, fan on) and that was enough...
(although it looks as though the link has changed to the main archive on this site, but all the comments and post title refer to this article. Odd.)
Synthesizing polynitro compounds is no chocolate fondue party, either: if you picture a bunch of guys wheeling around drums of fuming nitric acid while singing the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore, you're not that far off the mark. You really have to beat the crap out of a molecule to get that many nitro groups on it, which means prolonged heating of things that you'd really rather not heat up at all.
The other articles in that category are mostly equally exciting.
And yes, I'm totally expecting someone to point to the HN posting guidelines that state that anything that may be of interest to geeks is appropriate...
Karma is a measure of time expended.
I for one like that these articles get through. This particular one won't get me into chemistry, but it was a fun read, and now I know something I didn't know before. But there are other articles that have been "tangential" that opened new doors for me. Sometimes I don't know there is something out there, and others tell me about it, e.g. through this site. That is useful to me. Pure pull is not the way to expand my knowledge.
And if you're doubtful about how tangential information can be door opening... here is a story about this week: I am currently ramping up on a research project about clock synchronization and security for it. A lot of synchronization systems rely on GPS and this is shown to be spoofable, so we're examining security for those clocks, particularly in geographically dispersed systems. Some guy I was chatting with at happy hour does research in remote sensing in the ionosphere, and was telling me about certain characteristics that the ionosphere imparts to signals from satellites. I had no idea of this, but together we worked out an interesting collaboration on a "tangential" bit of work - using the electron density on the transmission path to help authenticate signals. Probably it's good that I did curiosity and learning about off-topic stuff, rather than say "ooh, cool, I'm do some security stuff" and move on.