She should have just taken it off… 

Just remember: The parts that you don't want everybody to see are also the parts you really don't want to be chemically burned.

Remember: Even if you have to strip down completely heck-naked to prevent chemical burns, _that's better than having to go to the hospital because of chemical burns_

Chem class in 11th grade. Our teacher had a phD but lacked almost all teaching skills. One day, he was holding a bottle with some liquid, went around in class, opened it and let a student take a sniff. "It's bromine - just a little toxic haha" Were his following words. Dude definitely sniffed too many chemicals in his career.

You should do a tier list on the areas of chemistry you can get a PhD in

I got really into some 18th century medicine and decided to use silver nitrate to sterilize an especially bad frostbite wound I had. It sterilized it pretty well and actually completely killed the infected tissue, but some of the silver nitrate spilled into a nearby pitcher of water without me noticing, since I was doing this in my kitchen. The next day, when I was getting ready for work, I went to fill my water bottle from that pitcher, and noticed it was a bit cloudy. I ignored the obvious red flag and ended up drinking some very dilute silver nitrate for a couple hours into my work before I noticed that my throat felt very dry and was starting to hurt. I hope no one else ever goes through this, but I put the pieces together at this point, and frantically googled what happens when silver nitrate is ingested. Needless to say, I completely panicked and ran out of work to buy a gallon jug of water at the supermarket next door to chug, as well as some activated charcoal. I took a few charcoal tablets and drank about half a gallon of water to try to not die. Over the next few days, I learned what it feels like when the surface layer of cells in your esophagus necrose and start peeling away. Luckily, it didn't completely obliterate my digestive system though. I think I learned my lesson, and I will be leaving 18th century medicine in the 18th century from now on.

Okay so here’s a fun story from my grad school days. Normally, liquid nitrogen tanks are fitted with pressure relief fittings but this tank (which the lab had since 1980) had both fittings fail at some point in the past. Instead of getting a new tank, the holes were fitted with metal plugs and welded off. Why it didn’t blow before was a real stumper but presumably people were taking nitrogen out of it quick enough to keep it together. At around 3am, when no one was in the lab, the internal tank expanded to press against the external tank so the only place for further expansion was the ends. Well, the bottom of the tank ruptured around a 1200 psi load. I saved a copy of the report from the engineer and have attached it here. This is where things get scary: The cylinder had been standing on the end of a 20’x40’ laboratory on the second floor of the chemistry building. It was on a tile covered 4-6” concrete floor, directly over a reinforced concrete beam. The explosion blew all the tile off the floor in a 5’ radius of the tank, turning the tile into quarter-sized bits of shrapnel that embedded in the walls of the lab. The blast cracked the floor, but due to the presence of the supporting beam, which shattered, the floor held. Since the floor held, the force of the explosion was directed upwards and propelled the cylinder, sans bottom, through the concrete ceiling of the lab and into the maintenance room above. It struck two 3” water mains and drove them and the electrical wiring above into the roof of the building, cracking it. The cylinder came to rest on the third floor of the building, leaving a 20” diameter hole in its wake. The entrance door and wall of the lab were blown out into the hallway. All the remaining walls were 4-8” off their foundations. All the windows, save one that had been left open, were blown out into the courtyard.

Wild blackberries make a good ph indicator. They also make good muffins. So yes, I have tasted the chemicals I’ve worked with I’m not a chemist. I just like making the colors change by alternating baking soda and lemon juice onto a mashed blackberry. Never lose your inner child.

In response to the question about the "special sauce," it's likely Churn, which is a sodium hydroxide solution used to remove carbonized crud off fryers, belted ovens, etc. Where I worked at, you used a spray bottle of it for the floors if there was a massive grease spill earlier in the day and it didn't all get up. You used a splash of it to soak the oven belt overnight, and it made that sucker shiny again.

"To get blasted like a stormtrooper" made my day. I am still waiting for the confession of the "chemists" working in the port of Beirut...

when i was in uni, we were working with chloroacetic acid. my stupid ass brain, for no apparent reason, after seeing the lab teacher talking about this white salt-like powder and heard chlor-something acet-something thought that we were talking about sodium acetate. i took a plastic square tray, and weighted the substance (that was indeed chloroacetic acid) i took it back to my place and said to my lab mate that i took the sodium acetate we needed. he, who has a functioning brain, noticed that i made a mistake and asked me to throw the sodium acetate, and i simply ate the whole content of the plastic tray because sodium acetate has a decent taste and i wanted to impress him with my braveness. The taste wasn't that bad and at first i thought i actually just ate sodium acetate. After some minutes my brain had a spark of intelligence, wich is rare, and told me that sodium acetate should be a basic-dissociation-salt but the powder had instead a really acidic taste. I then realized what just happened and discovered on pubchem that chloroacetic acid is really toxic and actually deadly if enough of it is ingested. i induced myself vomit and spent the rest of the day with stomac cramps BUT i now actually know how it tastes. if you wonder, it has a metal-rusty acid taste. not recommended 1/10.

Not a chemistry setting at all, but I have a friend who works in a shop, one of the things their work involves is welding. They had just prepped a part for welding using brakleen, and forgot to clean it off the surface before pre heating the part to weld. He ended up hitting the part with the blowtorch, and immediately filling the entire shop with phosgene gas and having to evacuate.

The bra incident reminds me... many years ago, I acquired some scars on my neck (now largely faded), under my shirt collar. Had a little oopsie with some nitric acid, jumped in the shower with my clothes on, and removed my clothes - but by the time I got my shirt off, there was some nasty-looking skin damage. In such situations, absorbent clothing is not your friend. No, I wasn't wearing a lab coat. Goggles, yes, and a good thing too. ... As it turned out, I didn't need to be using full-strength acid anyway. Diluting it a fair bit with water gave much better results for the task at hand, once I got back to it.

6:20 yea humility is definitely a learnt quality in people. I have on many occasions seen PhD students skipping over safety precautions and cutting corners because they "knew what they were doing". My favourite one was when someone decided that she could eyeball a -50 deg C instead of using a thermometer for a Swern oxidation of a particularly unreactive alcohol. For the uninitiated the Swern oxidation is often done at -78 deg C for convenience but this particular piece of literature suggested temperatures over -60 BUT UNDER -45 above which "dangerous runaways were frequently observed". She had apparently "done this before" but someone was taught a valuable lesson in why people need to cool entropy driven reactions that day (glass in face).

One lab I worked in did a lot of organoboron chemistry. A post-doc was doing a vacuum distillation of a mixture of allyl-chloro-boranes, without a lab coat, and the "cow" receiver imploded, spraying the corrosive product across his torso. He threw the shirt off and jumped into the safety shower, and was unharmed. The shirt looked like it had been sliced open with a lightsaber, leaving a jagged and charred diagonal gash from hip to shoulder. It now hangs above the safety shower as a reminder to wear proper PPE. Also, this is how the lab found out the post-doc had nipple rings, which no one really saw coming.

i’m not really sure how i ended up here, since i majored in graphic design before flunking out of college - but the bleach thing reminded me of my own chemical oopsie. it was right after i graduated high school, a friend and i decided to dye our hair. any time i dye my hair, dye ends up on multiple bathroom fixtures. there were black stains on the sink and tub basins that just wouldn’t lift, no matter how much i scrubbed. i clearly needed something stronger - so i grabbed some comet bleach powder we kept under the sink. within minutes i developed a terrible headache, which i almost wrote off until my friend mentioned having one as well. for those not in the know; almost all hair dyes use some ammonium compound (and hydrogen peroxide) to lighten hair. i had just poured the unused hair dye down the sink and chased it with bleach powder! we immediately opened all the windows and set up a couple box fans for good measure. asides from the headaches, we were both fine.

At my first job I was told to always have a spare set of clothes in my desk in case my clothes got dissolved. Twice in 40+ years I lost complete sets of clothes to H2SO4. Always know where the safety showers are and don't be shy. It's better to walk to you office soaking wet and naked than suffer bad (or worse) burns.

I imagine the "Special Sauce" for dealing with Grease and oils for the kitchen cleaner guy story is probably some kind of strong peroxide like you get in oven cleaners.

14:44 Huh, hearing about this makes me realise something that happened to me back in January 2021 The restrictions were starting to lighten, and for New Year's, our family decided to go to a famous church that was pretty far from where we live. I rode into my cousin-in-law's car with my Mom, and they were all wearing that "AiR pUriFiEr iOnIsIng aNtI-cOvId nEckLaCe" that they bought from Shopee, and I was the only one who wasn't wearing one bc I didn't believe in that stuff. I felt so uncomfortable during that car ride, and I couldn't breathe properly. I could only feel relief when the windows were rolled down on my side. However, I couldn't have it down the whole time because ✨COVID✨, also car smoke. I thought it was just my asthma acting up at first, since ya boi has pretty weak lungs. Then my cousin-in-law apologised for the lack of airflow because their A/C was broken. I really thought it was either of those two things, until today. Today, I learnt that I was probably huffing Ozone in that car ride because of a scam product. And because I had weaker lungs than the rest of the gang, I was the only one who felt like s🅱️it.

1:08 Ah, chemical explosions in factories. First it was fertilizer (ammonia), now it’s soap. 1:47 I’ve seen ants dissolve in HCl, I wonder what a dissolving lab mouse looks like.

i can confirm oxidane exactly tastes how it smells like

For the cleaning solution story, most American restaurants order cleaning supplies from Ecolab, I've seen both the Walk n Wash and Grease Strip in previous jobs at restaurants. The SDS for Grease Strip says it's 5-10% concentrated NaOH. Makes sense why the guy's knees got torn up. A lot of cleaning chemicals use similar chemistry to "regular" chemicals, like H2SO4 or HCl. Usually with some inhibitors or some such to limit harm, but of course it can't be completely avoided with half an hour of contact.

Gawd. Those ionizers... Lived with an old woman (now surprisingly in failing health) a few years ago who ignored my warnings about 03 after figuring out what this odd device was that showed up one day. Her "nutritionist" friend said it was good for her...... My room was far enough removed I didn't get much exposure as long as I stayed there, but I eventually got tired of the entire place smelling like, well, some say it smells like bleach, but possibly due to other smells in the apartment from essential oil lamps and her animals, it smelled like......I'll call it "male emissions." And now that's what you'll think of every time you smell ozone. You're welcome. I moved out after sabotaging the ionizer didn't work. She had an aversion to Amazon, so she must have gotten a replacement from that nutritionist.

The first lab I worked at had this dessicator, with a big fat skull and crossbones sticker on it, which contained dozens of highly toxic substances, most notably of which being a fairly large vial of ricin. Turns out it has more uses than just poison, but honestly I was afraid just to breath the air surrounding that box of death.

The "parents were more well educated" stuff is probably a veeery specific thing based on middle class parents in the united states Today parents (and kids!) are in general more educated and safety info is way easier to come by. It is easy to find a video on RU-vid about why you should NOT be careless around making lightning patterns on wood with high voltage or to Google the hazards of a chemical Anyway, love your videos. I'm not even educated in chemistry and the details often fly over my head, but through them I've found a deep and fearful respect for chemistry.

Ty for explaining some of the stuff like the plateum/carbon for us non-chemists who are still fascinated by this stuff.

The anti grease stuff is super common I worked in fast food as a teen and I got grill cleaner on my arms and it dissolved my skin on some blotches

this seems pretty tame compared to a lot of the stories, during one of my undergraduate labs we were running a soxhlet extraction on aspirin using ethanol to extract the acetyl salicylic acid, during the extraction i started to get quite light headed, i didnt think anything of it at first but when i turned around to see plumes of ethanol coming out of the top of a labmates condenser. i dont really know how they managed that but our proffessor wasnt too impressed and quickly turned their heating mantle off.

The phosgene story reminded me of a horror story I heard about while I was going through trade school. And I promise you this is going to be a crazy one. So during my A/C certification classes our instructor would tell us that automotive technicians are chemists of a different breed and not entirely for all good reasons. Back in the day when human safety was arguably a joke in the automotive industry and car A/C systems had R-12 refrigerant (dichlorodifluoromethane or CCl2F2 or some times we call it CFC), If a car had an A/C leak the way to check where the leak was coming from was to take a torch (the tool had a specific name I cant remember it but it was basically a torch with a glass cage) and when R-12 came in contact with the flame it would change colors (cool right?). Well unaware to technicians when you burn R-12 it would produce phosgene gas and if you weren't careful you'd get a big lung full of this stuff. As you can imagine yes people died because of this. Now the horror story. My instructor was telling us about how there was a car with an R-12 A/C leak and was somehow making its way through the engine, getting burned and sent out the exhaust pipe where ever this car drove. Unfortunately as the car was being brought into his shop and pumping this gas out, it ended up killing the tech who was working on the car and 2 others who were working behind the car. Cars these days now use R-134a which is tetrafluoroethane (CH2FCF3) or R-1234yf which is 2,3,3,3-Tetrafluoropropene which is a hydrofluoroolefin (CH₂=CFCF₃). And the best part is we no longer burn things to find leaks of any sort. Thank God technology has come a long way

If I've learned anything from my very limited home chemistry, it's that I'm glad I always took set up safety seriously. There's so much you don't know, and you dodge potentially hazardous mistakes by being set up in a good area, wearing proper PPE, and keeping your head on your shoulders. What I'm saying is, doing home chemistry like the guy claiming he was a great synthetic chemist should engender the opposite attitude. You should have an idea of just how little you know and how dangerous things can be. How you end up thinking you're some chemistry hotshot by doing experiments at home is baffling.

In the past I used to work at swimming pools. Once a year, usually around Christmas, the pool shuts down for a few weeks so we can drain it and scrub it. The first thing we'd do after the pool was drained, was to dump 2 ~208L (55 gallons) drums of HCl. Afterwards we'd rinse off the pool with a hose, and then dump many bottles of bleach. We'd hop down into the pool, and scrub using sponges, scrub brushes, whatever else. On our hands and knees, wearing sandals, or barefoot, only some had gloves. There wasn't enough rubber boots for everyone either, and no one had a mask of some kind. We would spend a solid 6-8hrs cleaning and scrubbing. But because it was an indoor pool, there was quite a bit of fumes from the HCl and the bleach. I'd get headaches or be a bit dizzy or nauseous at times, so I'd go outside to breathe some fresh air for 5-10min. I ended up with a few mild acid burns on hands that were fine after a couple of days. But then my left foot (more specifically my big toe and the inner part) were burned quite a bit more. For the next couple of months the skin was bright red, then dark red, then light red, and even healed with no last damage. Though my foot felt like it was constantly too hot or a burning feeling and that lasted for almost a year, even after the redness faded. It's been a few years since, and everything turned out okay for me in the end. However to this day whenever I smell bleach, I feel quite sick and sometimes violently gag. Though that only lasts for a few seconds

In 2019 I went to middle school on the open house day. My old chemistry teacher there introduced me to an interested young chemistry fanatic, who wanted to visit this school. The teacher prepared the experiment in which he threw sodium into water and watched it burn. I then asked him: „What’s that haze coming off of it?“ „Good question.“, he said: „The haze is steam.“ Next time he prepared the experiment: „What’s that haze coming off of it?“ „It’s not haze, it’s Hydrogen.“ The boy next to me and I looked at each other in complete confusion. I then told that same boy, he should not go to this school, because with this teacher his talent will be ruined. I got the bad luck of suffering from the time with him. There are many, many more bad stories with this teacher. I am glad, I overcame the bad grades from him, but my then dream of becoming a chemist might never return. He followed my advice not to go to that school. Now he even invented a new sythetic for pharmacy, don’t know anything else about it tho. May he stay as innovative as he already is and let himself not constrain in his abilities

I used to work in a factory making rock anchors and related products for the mines. The glue cartridges had benzoyl peroxide paste in it. We would get it in 55-gallon cardboard drums with plastic liners. I never liked working with it, I've heard horror stories about high-test peroxide.

My chemistry teacher told me a story similar to the bra one. When he was a student (which was during communism) his university organized a trip to a chemical plant. One of the sections they were visiting was where they were making aniline from nitrobenzene, by reducing it with iron fillings and HCl. A girl wearing some polyester tights accidentally leaned on a PVC pipe. Yea, you guessed it, it was the HCl delivering pipe and it ruptured under her weight. The acid splashed allover her legs, turning her tights into fishnet. Luckily, they had showers nearby and the acid wasn't concentrated, all she got was a chemical rash that lasted a few days. PS I so want to go to New Delhi!

Interesting to see your comments re phosgene. During my PhD I used phosgene constantly, and would liquify it to add to reaction mixes via an ice-jacketed addition funnel. The source of our phosgene was via a cylinder that was closed off with a square nut. To crack open the cylinder required two people, one to hold the cylinder and one to open the valve with a huge adjustable spanner. Anyhoo, some junior PhD candidates were setting up to rune a phosgene reaction in the overnight lab, so I am helping them. We condensed around 20-30ml of liquid phosgene and it was placed into the ice jacketed dropping funnel. The junior guys set up their run and I was doing a final check. I noticed the ice back around the reaction flask was melting really fast, so looked for the cause. It turns out the junior had accidentally left the heater on the hot plate/stirrer turned on full. I pointed that out to him, so he loosened the clamp holding the reaction flask and lifted it out off the melting ice bath. As he went to move out the ice bath of the (very) hot hotplate, his lab coat sleeve caught on the stopcock of the liquid phosgene filled additional funnel and pulled it out. The liquid phosgene (boiling point 8.3degC) deposited itself onto the now hot hotplate and instantly vaporised. Despite being in a fine hood, the phosgene flashed off and sprayed the junior and a second junior standing next to him. The two juniors then legged it out of the lab and sped down the corridor to the door to exit the building, throwing off cloths as they ran. In the meantime, I stayed in the lab and (mistakenly) opened the windows of the lab to get rid go the now gaseous phosgene, whilst holding my breath. Windows open, I exited the lab and stood by the door to prevent anyone entering. Big mistake as the air in the building was at a lower pressure than outside, so the phosgene was now being blown out of the lab into the corridor through the gap around the door. As it was after hours, I thought this was the best course of action rather than sounding the alarm to evacuate the building. Big mistake. The Head of School came by and stopped to chat with me with phosgene streaming through the door. Luckily he was standing away from the stream (phosgene has an unusually pleasant odour than one would thing from its structure). Anyway, the HOS finishes his conversation and walks off. Back come the 2 juniors, now wearing significantly less clothing than they were originally wearing. "Just how toxic is phosgene?" they ask. "why don't you go up to the library and check then if you don't know" I say (this is pre-"Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 came into effect for Universities in the UK). So off they go. 20 min later they are back. "Holy crap" they say, "you can breathe in a lethal dose and show no ill effects for several hours, then drown in your own body fluids" Next morning the juniors rock up to work. One looked really pale. I ask him, "so what's up with you?" the reply was " I was watching News at 10 and coughed. I didn't know whether to call for an ambulance, so I stayed awake till around 5:00am" So several oopsies all around. Still this was an era in what I believe was very Darwinian. Complete your PhD and still alive and/or with all fingers or other appendages, you earn your PhD. Happy(?) days!

Speaking of ozone, a family friend of mine is a naturopath and chiropractor. He had an ozone generator that he called an air purifier. This was back between 95-2005ish. His daughter was very young around then, and I could always smell the ozone throughout the house whenever I visited.

I found an article on silver plating in a 50's electronics magazine with instructions for creating a cyanide based plating solution, It then suggested that for safety any excess cyanide should be flushed down the toilet with two flushes!

Former hotel worker here. We use Ozone generators on particularly aeromatic rooms. Set the timer for 30m-1h, turn it on and lock down the room. Mitigation for bed bugs is even more fun: Tent the room off and raise the temp up to 170f. Roast for 12 hours.

About tasting chemicals, I had that chemistryset when I was about eleven. In it a container Ammonium chloride. I knew it was an ingredient of liquorice. Also the name on the container read 'salmiac' what is also the name of a popular powdered candy at the time. You understand why this eleven year old tasted a spatula full of the stuff every time the set was opened.

Man modern chemists are nothing like the great men and women from the past, What do you mean you dont taste your chemicals?!

0:38 Acetone. It just splashed into my mouth

That second story: the chemical safety board liked hearing that

There's a chemical market in Saigon where you can get basically anything, my wife told me there was an article about a cyanide murder where the cyanide was sourced there. The chemicals are transported by motorbike there in unmarked containers. But she told me she wouldn't go there with me to ask for all kinds of stuff because a white guy asking for chemicals there would freak them out :D

My mom did a lab using scathol (the compound that gives shit it's wonderful smell) and some got on her hand. So for a few hours her fingers smelled strongly of shit.

When I used to live with my sister in law, she was a neat freak that insisted I use bleach when mopping. Including the laundry room where she kept the dogs overnight that would have piss and shit all over the floor that has now turned into ammonia. If I develop lung problems later in life I know who to blame.

The degreaser story: the additional ingredient you are talking about is probably concentrated NaOH. I worked at one restaurant which had a "premium" degreaser mix that contained it, and one guy there handled it without gloves. Let's just say he never handled it without gloves again.

A postdoc in my lab was attempting a reaction using small amounts of solid bleach (NaOCl x 5 H2O). Despite being told to always keep it - and the reaction - cold, after 10 minutes I could hear a loud *phooomp* and some glass breaking. I was in the office. On the other side of the hallway.... Thankfully noone (with the exception of that glass stopper) got hurt

the death hood scores another unsuspecting victim each day

"analysis paralysis" got me rolling

What these videos have taught me is that chemists have the weirdest track record with mouse deaths

Degreaser is a very standard chemical cocktail to have in any commercial kitchen, ESPECIALLY in fast food where deep fryers and grills can potentially leak or spill all kinds of oil and rendered animal fats onto the floor around them. You do NOT want to just let that stuff stay on the floor. For one, it's a massive slip hazard. For two, it's also a food safety hazard, because fats are one of the many favorite foods of multiple foodborne bacteria. The problem is that just plain soap or standard floor mopping solution doesn't have the chooch to cut through that crap. You need something that can chemically break it down and make it more water soluble. That's where degreaser comes in. It cuts through all kinds of fats and oils fast enough to clean it up before it's sat around long enough to be the health & safety hazard it already is. But of course, in order to do so, it has to cut through ALL kinds of fats--including the same fatty acids that make up cell walls. Hence, its ability to dissolve your own flesh if you're careless with it and don't wash it off as soon as it gets on you. It's just a fact of life in the kitchen. If you can come up with something as good as but safer to use, you'll make bank from the entire restaurant & fast food sector. But until then, it's what we have to use to keep commercial kitchens clean. Source: Have worked in fast food.

I checked out the book you mentioned "Electrical experiments for boys", and made the carbon rod furnace. I borrowed an ark welding hood from a neighbor and had a great time learning while melting nickles and turning plain dirt into beads of green glass. That was in the early 60's when chemistry sets had a few real chemicals in them, and most of the kids had a few more brain cells than today's kids.

Horatio Caine: Mister Wolfe, the victims may be deceased, but the survivors of the Benzoyl Peroxide explosion are remarkably acne free. (OH YEAH!)

I'm old but not THAT old (early '80s) and I came up with many of the type of books to which you mention. One that comes to mind is "The Boy Electrician" by Alfred Morgan. I think it a dereliction of duty that so many parents neglect teaching their children to use just precautions and care while exploring their native curiosity. As G.K. Chesterton was quoted: "The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder."

This is a story from a friend. They were working in a restaurant in Arkansas. On the instructions for prepping to mop the floor, they are told to pour in cleaner A, which contains ammonia. Then they were told to add cleaner B, which contains bleach, all before adding water to dilute. Sure, that'll probably kill most of stuff on the floor, but is it worth breathing in the fumes???

As a chef, many restaurants especially larger commercialized ones will use very concentrated solutions of detergents or bases or similar that are supposed to be mixed in a ratio of a teaspoon or two or a capful per large 8 gallon mop bucket or even more diluted between two such buckets. I never worked with the concentrated stuff without gloves as I have been told it will mess up my hands, but we generally only use it to clean non food surfaces such as the floor, walls, and what not, while using a super dilute "pro quat" solution to clean everything else as a light sanitizer which is generally fairly food safe when dried, but often will still use water to rinse and wipe things off anyway just because otherwise we would be very worried. Kitchens will often have multiple different unknown chemicals, along with common household Bleach for deep cleaning purposes (soaking cutting boards overnight, then putting them through a few dishwasher cycles to clean off the bleach) to remove any deep red or colored food stains that are saturated into the cutting boards.

Floor stripper is nasty stuff. I used to write SDS for a cleaning chemical company, and floor stripper was up there with oven cleaner on the hazard scale. Both are usually concentrated sodium/potassium hydroxide with a glycol ether (butyl cellosolve) and a flammable isopropanol-water mixture as the solvent. People really underestimate cleaning chemicals, especially ones that you dilute down from a concentrate. However, they are designed to be used with a rinse and follow-up treatment (for floors). Fun fact - strong bases react violently with aluminum, corroding it and producing hydrogen gas. We had some reports of ruined doors after stripper was splashed on an aluminum screen door.

I’m a mortician and I’m order to get licensed in MN you have to graduate from an accredited program. One of our classes was embalming of course, and using formaldehyde, gluteradlehyde, phenol, and several combinations at various concentrations. We have to do lab safety and bloodborn pathogen training beforehand- but we still had two incidents in the semester I took the class. One of my classmates was placing a cannula in the carotid artery and as she started injecting fluid into the cadaver the rubber tubing popped off. She was drenched and got embalming solution in her mouth and soaked through her PPE. She immediately got in the drench shower and luckily we had extra scrubs for her to change into and the med schools clinic literally across the street. She got away with just some chemical burns on the roof of her mouth. Another lab class we were using a chemical called dry wash which is a super intense solvent- we use it as a degreaser and nail polish remover in the prep room. Apparently it dosent play well with some nitrile gloves as myself and a lab partner both got contact chemical burns where the dry wash touched the gloves.

I worked in a kitchen where the staff regularly washed the floor with bleach. At some point, someone decided to start adding vinegar to the bleach water, to "help degreasing the floor"... It went on for a while before I found out why there was a strong smell of chlorine in the kitchen on occasion.

1:50 Me too. But I also completed with a mouthful of HCl, with the same mechanism. In both cases the solutions were quite diluted and there were no consequences. In case you are wondering: HCl tastes... acidic? (yeah, no surprise I guess) NaOH tastes like you bite a bar of soap...

Speaking as someone who has both worked in kitchens and done some university-level study in chemical labs! The cleaning solution from the kitchen story is most likely just concentrated NaOH - odourless (so it doesn't taint the food) and easily saponifies grease - possibly with a thickening agent to make it cling to surfaces (for increased time to react). You see similar substances used for hard tops and in industrial dishwashing machines. I can well believe that concentrated NaOH could eat through someone's skin.

Regarding the Pd/C Story, the same thing happend to me. I must have had a really bad day, so I was adding 5 g of dry Pd/C to a 2 liter flask with 500 ml of MeOH, without flushing it with Argon before. And woosh, instant flamethrower out of the neck of the flask. Luckily nothing else caught on fire, but it was a huge mess. Everything was covered with charcoal.

Can't say I for sure swallowed any compounds I worked with, but after working with acids I consistently had a slightly bitter/sour taste in my mouth which lined up with exactly how I always imagined said acids would taste

Commercial grease stripper = oven cleaner. Strong alkali.

I’ve never dealt with sulfuric acid but how coherent do we think that girl was on a scale of mindless screaming to logic and reason

If that is the greasestrip+ I used to use, 12.5% sodium hydroxide.

They still use electrolytic loads to test locomotive generators. The electrolyte is usually salt water.

At my job, we use a chemical we call stripper to loosen up *all* the layers of wax on a floor to get rid of. My manager at the time told me about how a coworker of hers decided to use that stuff while in her socks. Her skin came off along with the socks.

I worked in a restaurant at one point and I was the one who had to clean the bathrooms. I was instructed to use bleach followed immediately with Windex on EVERY SURFACE. I was 15 so I was to nervous to express my concern about the burning sensation and the coughing, and I chalked it up to just using the cleaners with no ventilation(yeah). However after doing this a good few times and having my eyes and lungs burn for a couple hours I decided to test if there was a reaction between the bleach and Windex, lo and behold. I told my boss about this and she 100% thought I was either a hypochondriac or trying to get out of cleaning(this was my second or third week there). I responded by grabbing a cracked drinking glass that was laying off to the side and mixing some of the chemicals. Her face went pale when they foamed violently and she apologized.(As a side note apparently she had been doing this for years and not a single person noticed the fact they were being tear gassed with bleach and ammonia.)

The grease cleaning solution probably contains sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide. Literally turns grease into soap. Also turns flesh into soap.

5:14 the only pladium i ever heard of was in terraria

Ok so let me contribute my own chem lab stories here. These are from secondary school (Middle school for you Americans) lab. Nothing as violent as the other stories on here, but interesting nonetheless. Most memorable was when one guy in my class drank a dropperful of the ethanol we used in a biochemistry lab session we did. When he returned home, he nuked his bathroom. (Another funny thing about that lab session is that the samples we tested stank to hell and back) Another biochem lab, we were doing things with potatoes. One guy kept a lab potato (might've been contaminated) as his classroom windowsill pet, and had to throw it away after a few days since it'd gone black. I also remember heating a powder in a test tube and adding room temp solution to it. HISS-CRACK. And I also can't forget the time during the exam when a guy burned a paper towel on the Bunsen burner after being careless with it... those were the good old days.

Bras are actually a problem in the military because while they have cotton undies, the bras are nylon, resulting in unfortunate medical trips if they get too hot.

when you mentioned ozone and electronics i recall now that i used to suck the "yoummy air" from one of our desk lamps at home. That smell was so nice and i could continue doing homework. Also while reading i was sniffing that lamp. So i was puffing ozone. Nice

The special sauce was probably lye crystals mixed into a mop bucket. We used to use it in a spray bottle to clean the ovens because it was cheaper and safer than aerosol cleaners, and sodium hydroxide is the main ingredient in oven cleaner anyways. Safer in that it fumes a hell of a lot less, not that it's /safe/.

My dad used an air ionizer for years because he smoked in the same room that I was in, the computer room. I once put my nose right on it as the air kind of smelled cold. But it made my throat dry. Haa I really hope its not *that* dangerous

Clearly Sodium Hydroxide in the grease remover.

I made a Nitrogen laser in photonics and made a spectrometer with a nitrogen laser. Cobalt chloride, copper sulfate, ethanol, antifreeze.

I made that arc furnace. To this day I am amazed that I am alive and not blind. Maybe it was the same book that had instructions for build a cloud chamber, but I had no idea how to get dry ice. No, parents back then did not magically know better. Also, those books were wonderfully free of any warnings that everything in them could kill you. Typical instructions might begin, "Using a piece of pitchblende..." or "Scrape some of the coating from glow in the dark clock..."

The story about the grease stripper reminds me of my old job at a soda factory. Between products, we'd have to sanitize the carbonation tanks. I looked up one of the chemicals we used for this and the SDS listed 25% hydrogen peroxide, 10% acetic acid, and 6% peroxyacetic acid. That stuff even smelled dangerous, and even when it was diluted for sanitation (about three gallons to about 500 gallons water) it would leave the skin on my arms red and strip all the oil off my skin. I was the only person who wore gloves, apron, and a splash shield handling that stuff, my coworkers always handled it with bare hands. I can never understand that attitude.

As a TA (20ish man) in an undergrad bio lab i witnessed a girl splash H2SO4 on her upper body. I helped rip her lab coat and shirt off (trying to keep it off her face so we tore/cut it off) and then basically fought with her to get her bra off. She resisted for a bit till i pointed to the brown spots starting to show up on the fabric then i took it off-she agreed to this. I helped her shower and directed the class to leave the Rm. 100% NOT SEXUAL. More like Ohhh shitt ohh shittt i hope shes ok. Next day i was called in front of the dean and campus security and she accused me of shittt. I was sooooo pissed. Fortunatly we were not alone and the whole rm of students saw how i was acting. If we were alone i would have likely been kicked out of school and maybe legal trouble too

About producing ozone in house... A friend of mine has an old soviet fluorescent UV-C lamp. It produces shitload of ozone when turned on. In high school we used to play with it a bit (we had enough gray matter to leave room immidiately after turning it on and close the doors). After running it for just a few minutes you could feel strong smell of ozone in the room and after a while... you could smell absolutely nothing. Any smell was destroyed by ozone. We had a hypothesis that ozone just oxized to death all the smelly compounds in the air. So... I guess that making ozone in home, in a way of using ozone generator as a air refresher isn't completely stupid idea, although a bit dangerous one.

The post about building high-voltage electrical experiments creeped me out on a _visceral_ level. The moment I heard 150 kV, I felt liquefied nitrogen replace my blood. That is thrice the voltage of either a law enforcement taser, the upper limit of the voltage that powers a large color picture tube, or a spark plug in an engine, and comparable to the voltage of a small average regional municipal power transmission line.

I remember from my dads dairy job they clean the whole thing with nitric acid at odd days and some very basic solution on the other days. Could the special sauce something like that?

I walk around the lab naked hence never having equipment mishaps

I'm a man, and I can't grasp stoichiometry either. Have you seen styropyro's short series on finding and using (within reason) a 19th century chem textbook. Scary, scary stuff. Stories? Well, I haven't been in a lab since high school, but our chem teacher was certifiably insane - when demonstrating Na in water, she used a tub of water and pieces of Na at least the size of my thumb. Right behind a tin shed, so the sound kinda carries - when she demonstrated thermite, she did it on her desk at the front of a full class. Plastic tray full of sand, tripod, coffee can with a hole in the bottom. No PPE, no blast screen, nothing. To this day, there is a nice, black chrysanthemum burned into the ceiling directly above her desk. She also didn't mind us playing with chemicals, as long as we've completed the classwork. One day in 9th grade (14 years old), we were cleaning up and I had a test tube with some grey powder, and another full of clear liquid, which I knew to be an acid, but wasn't sure which one. Long story short, the powder was PbS, and the acid was HCl. Filled the room with H²S, right before 7th grade came in (Not nearly enough to trigger an evac, but more than enough to stink out the room. Finally, and this one was entirely on me, we used to get food delivered home. Premade meals (weight loss program). The dinners always arrived frozen, in a Styrofoam box of dry ice pellets. One very hot summer day, I got home from school to find a delivery. I put it all away, and was left with a box full of dry ice. It's hot as balls, so I put my face into the box to cool down a bit. Worked great. Right up until I tried to inhale. Felt like my lungs were shrivelling up and dying for at least a few minutes.

0:35 I used to lick leaking fluids from vehicles when I was mechanic.. only the wet ones not the oily ones... this is the quickest way to diagnose a leak source. Usually, there are only 3 options... not including battery acid because that doesn't normally leak 1 condensed water from the air conditioning. 2. screen wash, which contains alcohol and bittrex 3. antifreeze, which is about 20 to 30% ethylene or propylene glycol

I work on electronics and was using one of those compressed air dusters containing R134a in an inverted position to 'freeze' a suspect chip that was working intermittently. I'd then push on the chip and flex the board to try and make it fail as it chilled and warmed. The chip was indeed bad and I paused work to pop a stick of gum in my mouth. Instead of a cool, minty, refreshing flavor, I was met with the most godawful, horrid, bitter thing I'd ever tasted. After spitting out the gum and washing my mouth out several times, it took me a while to discover what had happened. Among the warnings on the can was "This formulation contains a bitterant to discourage inhalation." Ah. Got it. Well it works. I had a small amount of residue on my fingers from touching the chip. I can't imagine how terrible this would taste if you were stupid enough to try inhaling this to catch a buzz.

work in a kitchen, we've also got grease strip. no idea what it is but it smells STRONGLY acidic. like, "i should step away and not breathe that in" kind of smell. its used for stuff that's got food burned on or just really bad stuck egg. spray it, let it sit (probably don't stand near it) then rinse it off. takes everything off the pan. if it somehow doesn't, try again, and if that doesnt work the pan's garbage. it's crossed my mind a few times like "man we're putting that on the stuff we put food in," but eh, works real good on burned pans that were forgotten in the oven for 8 hours. that was a fun one.

When I was young, my Dad had a mold problem in his closet. He bought a high-power ozone machine. he ran it for hours in his closet. I, a curious child, wanted to see what large quantities of ozone smelled like, so I went into my parents' bedroom. The ozone smell was intense, but not to the point where it stopped smelling like ozone. Then, I went into the closet. The odor was so intense that it stopped smelling like ozone. It smelled like a hotel room had taken LSD, if that makes any sense. I only spent about a minute in that room, until I had to leave. I didn't know about the toxicity of ozone at the time, so I wasn't worried about getting poisoned. The only effects the ozone had on me were a very mild headache and mild nausea.

Gladly I wasn’t even wearing one

Rule Nr One - never lick the spoon ;)

Those old experiment books are amazing, especially the collated scientific american one. Chemistry, biology, xrays, all sorts of questionable setups! Just in case you ever wanted to make a cloud chamber with a plunger or a telescope from a car mirror or an x-ray machine or a van de graaf powered tiny electrostatic accelerator

10:55 that's a standard over the counter oven cleaner. those things burn through rubber.

4:10 you can still order a lot of stuff online.. just need to know names/ category/ what it's used for. For example Al powder (dye/ coat) or powdered sulfur (used do disinfect beehives) There is a lot more control though, I imagine if you order 10kg you will have police/ anti-terrorists in your home asking some questions, and/ or the order will be canceled. Story from my city: uni chemistry class, acid spill not cleaned properly (teacher wasn't notified). Girl sits on a chair, stands up and there are holes in her jeans. And a fair bit of butt damage too.

the ozone air purifiers are meant for old cars to kill mold and bacteria from sitting

the kitchen cleaning story reminds me of a friend of mine who works at a pizza place. one day a giant tub of melted butter ended up spilling in the walk-in freezer, and he had to come in early to scrape it all off the wall/floor by hand. after almost an hour he had gotten most of it off and was kind of fed up with the whole thing, and decided to get the remaining stubborn bits with some industrial degreaser they kept in the cleaning supplies. it was at this point in telling me this story that he stopped and said, and i quote, “when using industrial degreaser, you should probably wear gloves, because it will obliterate the natural skin oils on your hands long before it actually does anything to the butter on the walls”. about a year later, he texted me “character development: remembered gloves before using the degreaser this time!”. that was followed up about an hour later with “update: i have chemical burns on my feet”. i love this friend but sometimes i genuinely wonder how he’s still alive.

As for ozone lamps - I still have one here, and you generally not supposed to be in same room with working lamp. Ozone isn't very stable form of oxygen, so once you turn lamp off and wait about an hour, room is safe.

Degreasers are usually pretty basic

I tasted brake cleaner and brake fluid. Does that count? #just mechanics stuff

Explosion risk vs. accepting zits.