Any chemists here?

[Tractor Seabee]

Eric, as you well know this stuff just keeps rolling out of old timers when the young pups raise the questions. I talk to kids today about the basic stuff we learned in HS General Science and math and they do not have a clue what its all about. In my pipe fitter days we had a problem getting qualified HS Grads for apprentice classes that could pass our basic science, physics, and math tests based on HS curriculum requirements. We had to run remedial classes on the basics first before starting the trade stuff. That trade is heavy in those subjects and it was a continuous learning process taking journeyman classes.

Ron

 

[joeu235]

I did a job 2 years ago where a kid spilled a mason jar full of mercury in the house garage. EPA was called and an industrial hazmat company did the clean up. I was subcontracted to rebuild the garage, bathroom, & closet once the decon was complete. Home insurance paid for everything.

 

[MossRoad]

I did a job 2 years ago where a kid spilled a mason jar full of mercury in the house garage. EPA was called and an industrial hazmat company did the clean up. I was subcontracted to rebuild the garage, bathroom, & closet once the decon was complete. Home insurance paid for everything.

YIKES!

About 21 years ago our gas company changed the gas meter from inside the basement to outside the basement. That evening, when I came home, I went to the basement and looked at the area where the old meter was.... there was a silver puddle the size of a quarter in a low spot on the Michigan basement concrete. I immediately guessed it was mercury. I poked it with a stick and, YEP! it was mercury. Called the gas company. They sent out a hazmat crew.

LARGE white box truck with two guys in Tyvek suits, special vacuum that's filters took up half the truck, and long hoses. In a nutshell, the old gas meters had mercury in them. They ran long hoses into the house, surrounded the area with barriers, sprayed several kinds of chemicals on the area as they vacuumed up the area....... all for something we played with as kids, liquid mercury.

Who knows what kind of fatal doses of what we all took in over our lives? And worse yet, how our genes may have been altered and then passed on to our kids. I often wonder what mutant DNA my dad passed on to us, as he used to show us scars on his arms where he volunteered for chemical warfare testing in the Army during WWII for some extra $$.

 

[Gary Fowler]

This does remind me that I have a jug of hydroflouric acid that I got from my dad that he used to clean the aluminum rims and tanks on his semi truck in the 80's. That needs to go to the toxic roundup.

Hydrofluoric acid is especially dangerous to be around with or without protective gear. HFA when it comes in contact with skin not only burns the skin, but penetrates the skin into the bone where it starts dissolving the bone.
BE ESPECIALLY CAREFUL WHEN HANDLING HYDROFLUORIC ACID.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Hydrofluoric acid is especially dangerous to be around with or without protective gear. HFA when it comes in contact with skin not only burns the skin, but penetrates the skin into the bone where it starts dissolving the bone.
BE ESPECIALLY CAREFUL WHEN HANDLING HYDROFLUORIC ACID.

Yep, HFA is bad stuff. Sometimes used in plating processes.

 

[arrow]

I did a job 2 years ago where a kid spilled a mason jar full of mercury in the house garage. EPA was called and an industrial hazmat company did the clean up. I was subcontracted to rebuild the garage, bathroom, & closet once the decon was complete. Home insurance paid for everything.

and 60 years ago we used to play with the stuff.

 

[Cord]

I had a simular experience. We were washing some glass block and I had a buck of muriatic that we were soaking the blocks in. Of course, I was doing this in the basement. Well, the project lost interest and the bucket sat in the basement for a couple of weeks unattended. I noticed the stainless front to our water heater was turning a weird color. The dust came right off when you touched it. After a while, I realized it was the muriatic evaporating and immediately poured it back into the jugs. Amazingly, all the iron gas fittings in the basement are well rusted. So are any tools that were in the area. Hopefully, the electric panel and connections will be ok. Never thought the acid would evaporate like that.

 

[Richard]

And worse yet, how our genes may have beeed with as kids, liquid mercury.

When I was probably 8-10 years old, I was at my grandparent's house in Findlay, Ohio. They had a brick fireplace in the back yard. I think they burned trash in it but, they might have used it for grilling (never in my life do I recall them grilling with it but I do remember burning wood in it)

So I was out there playing (with a fire) ... found a broken thermometer and used the heat to coax the mercury out and dumped the mercury into my hand. Not knowing how liquid it was, it rolled out of my hand and into the grass. I think I spent about an hour looking through the blades of grass thinking I could find the mercury and pick it up...

I think I was enamored with it because I had seen something on TV once (educational type show) where they took some "liquid" (mercury) and froze it in liquid nitrogen where it became a solid. They then hammered a nail into a board.... dipped the "hammer" into a glass of water and it dissolved, turning back into liquid mercury.

At least, that is my memory of what I saw. I think the same show, they took a blossoming rose flower, crushed it in their hand and though damaged, it "sprung back" to some degree when they released it. They then took another flowering rose, dipped it into the liquid nitrogen and it crushed into powder when they squeezed it.

I did however, dodge the craze of eating lead based paint...

 

[muddstopper]

I use Muratic acid all the time to remove aluminum transfer off of 2 cycle engine cyl. I keep it in the plastic jug it is sold in at hardware stores. I have also used it to prep concrete floors for painting. Always wear eye protection, rubber gloves and proper ventilation. For cleaning concrete, I mix the muratic in a water and spray in a pumpup garden sprayer, scrub the concrete with a broom and wash with a pressure washer. the water help neutralize the acid. For aluminum, cyl heads, I dip a blue paper towel in the acid and wipe down the inside of the cyl. The cyl are usually either chrome plated or nikasil plated. Muratic will dissolve chrome so care has to be used to not leave on the cyl to long. The acid will dissolve the aluminum that has transferred from the piston to the cyl and turn it to dust that can be wiped out with a rag and then rinsed in water to flush out the acid. Leave the acid to long, it will also eat away at the chrome plateing. The the best of my knowledge, the muratic acid wont hurt the nikasil plating, or at least I have never had a problem with it doing so.