I've read some of the comments, and no, my condition was definitely not caused by the light from magnesium burning. Remember, these symptoms don't ONLY point to ocular UV exposure. I've done this magnesium test in a few of my videos before, including my nitric acid and chlorosulfonic superacid videos, and I've messed with it a lot more outside of my videos as either ribbon or flash powder, and it has never given me any issues. And, most tellingly, the symptoms went away after the doctor rinsed my eyes out, which points STRONGLY to this being chemical irritation. Also, I know it might seem like I'm being rather casual about almost blinding myself (like I was when I accidentally overdosed on super-caffeine in the last video). That is just my personality and communication style: I'm not exactly the most dramatic person. I recognize the gravity of my mistakes, and the horrific outcomes that could've transpired. I want these videos to serve as reminders to be safe, and show that I'm not infallible. Mistakes can be made, and hopefully this will be the last serious mistake I make in one of my videos!
It would be worth checking for other factors that may have caused the injury. During incident investigations, it is easy to get hung up on the obvious factors and miss something else.
Yes and No. Yes, that probably is not from the magnesium burning. No, i don't think, that it's not from burning some stuff. The photokeratitis could be caused by the weird side product, which burned in 9:38. Also not from the light which got emitted in the visible range, rather UV-light, since you didn't burn much of it. The symptoms you described reminded me of working in a steel manufacturer where things got welded together. I only looked once for only a brief moment directly into the blue light which emitted by welding. And i had similar symptoms as you, although i didn't need to go to ER. But the feel of moving my eyes against sandpaper is so unique that you only can understand the uncomfort when you personally had contact with that topic.
You mentioned that you saw more intense magnesium flashes. But the wavelength of light and intensity are not necessarily coupled. A weaker flash but with more UV could do more damage than a more intense flash.
The symptoms and their delayed onset, combined with the fact you were thorough/cautious with the hand washing/shower afterwards (and before symptom onset), really makes me suspect UVC flash burn from looking at the magnesium burn experiment without eye protection. Just because you've burned magnesium, or other stuff in conjunction with magnesium, and had no ill effects (gotten lucky) before doesn't mean you can rule it out this time.
Exactly what I was thinking. I haven't gotten my eyes sunburnt before, but the ppl I know that have, described identical symptoms. A friend similarly did burn his retinas from welding (auto dimmer malfunctioned), and I got a gnarly sunburn on my face after 30 total seconds of exposure. Electrical arcs and burning metal are no joke.
Had the exact same symptoms after not wearing eye protection while watching a friend of mine weld something. Didn't even look straight into it, but I also got sunburn on my face from just these 20min or so.
@@engineer0239 Little tip for you, if you're not welding but working around people that are - wear a normal pair of plastic safety glasses, they block out 99% of the UV spectrum that gives you arc-eye.
Your eye troubles with the lithium aluminum hydride, and the weird color, was probably forming lithium tetrachloroaluminate, it's got that sorta greenish/yellowish tint to the pure dry form but also decays into a lotta nasty stuff on contact with moisture or flames, and the fumes of a LOT of the more volatile lithium compounds are not fun to get in your eyes and love to cause that lingering sandpaper-eyelid feeling - I speak from experience working with lithium salts on a daily basis. If I were you I'd get a full-face respirator and a spectacle kit instead of the halfmask, cause halfmask and goggles just don't cut it with a lotta things.
I think this is more likely. He's mentioned that he's burnt magnesium before (and a lot more of it) and he's never experienced that arc flash-like feeling. Not to say that it can't happen, but I think it's more likely to do with the reaction with lithium aluminium hydride.
@@samp1312 | EDIT | I say this as someone who's had a similar issue (not nearly hospital worthy, but still, a delayed irritation issue) with regular old capsaicin from dried, home made extra-fine cayenne pepper dust: | EDIT ENDS | Just speculation here, but there's a good chance that microparticulate solids of lithium tetrachloroaluminate (AlCl4Li) formed and deposited on the outside of his eyelids. That area (according to my optometrist) tries to constantly provide a thin layer of skin oil to prevent the skin from sticking to itself each time you open your eyes. (Side note: Not only does it like to trap dust and other particulates, but getting in your eyes just before putting your contacts in is quite unpleasant. Even the fresh, particulate-free oil secreted right after a shower to replace what you rinsed off isn't supposed to be there, and your eyes won't appreciate it.) If you're working with chemicals/dusts or anything that can produce microparticles capable of floating in the air, that dust can settle on the skin of your eyelids, and later be introduced into your eyes by rubbing them or any other vehicle for transporting particles/oils down into your eyes like a little sweat or that little bit of water left over after you bathe that the towel doesn't quite catch. So: I assume the AlCl4Li particles got rubbed into his eyes later that night, and adhered to the inside of his eyelids thanks to the moist environment and the grippy/rubber-like nature of the tissue. (For an easy visualization of how this works on a larger scale, take a bar of soap and a handful of sand. Wash your hands while holding the soap bar for a good few minutes or take a shower using that bar of soap, the goal is to get it nice and moist and soften it up a bit. Now grab that handful of sand, and press it into the soap, then try to wash the sand out. Most of the sand will wash away, but a nice thick layer will get stuck in the surface of the soap and will last a HECK of a long time before it dislodges. Seriously, with a fresh bar of soap just for this experiment, there'll be a noticeably gritty sandpaper texture for a good quarter of the soap bar's lifespan. The AlCl4Li particles likely did the same, getting stuck on the palpebral conjunctiva, which is the inside of the eyelid that covers the cornea.) Anyway. My assumption on how it played out is that once the AlCl4Li particles were introduced, he began to feel the irritation. And with repeated blinking effectively acting like sandpaper across an ever-more-sanded cornea accumulating micro-scratches, the pain starts out as a mild pain and rapidly reaches the point of being EXTREMELY painful. It hurts just to think about how bad it must have felt to have accumulating abrasive damage on a VERY delicate area made all the more sensitive by being essentially sandpapered by your own eyelids.
It was one of the ignitions but not the magnesium. Something that had low/moderate brightness in the visible spectrum but extremely bright in UV or IR. Of course, because you couldn't see the light in that range you didn't realize.
Maybe you were exposed to too much UV light from the experiments like the one with burning magnesium, and developed photokeratitis (arc eye). I think if it was chemical transfer, water and saline would have eased the pain, but it got worse instead. This is compatible with the characteristic "sand in your eyes" sensation and eye watering, that really only goes away with time. For some people it takes minutes of staring into a UV source to get this condition, but factors like how dilated your pupils are can make you more sensitive. But i guess it's possible there is some delayed onset chemical stuff going on
@@MightyRudeGoogle didn't have a clear answer, such as the average intensity of a welding flash, and how much UV 400 (total uv filtering rated for sunlight) is effective against that. However, a welding flash is brighter than the sun on a clear and dry day, so it's very unlikely that normal prescription glasses are sufficient protection.
One trick to having a water free aparature is to prepare the setup for it first and then put the glassware you are using into an oven at little over 100°C to dry it up and the quickly assemble while hot.
The injury to your eye seems very similar to UV eye injury (also known as flash burn), including the symptoms you described and the delay in onset. It could have been caused by one of the ignition experiments you conducted, most likely the magnesium powder.
So I couldn't find anything for LiAlH4, but there is a paper called "Preparation and Luminescent Characteristics of UV-C Emitting ZnAl2O4 Phosphor for Sterilization Device" where they poked it with an electron beam and got some UVC emission. But I'd agree, the magnesium was likely the culprit here.
I don't believe it was, since I've handled far more intense magnesium flashes before (and more of them in a row or over a longer period of time), and never had photokeratitis from it. My chlorosulfonic and nitric acid videos actually both had similar tests, and I was fine afterward (ironically, the chlorosulfonic acid video also had me dealing with POCl3)!
@LabCoatz_Science some safety goggles have UV protection, some don't. I wouldn't rule out magnesium burning. I'm a welder and i have had very minor changes in environment drastically change the amount of UV I'd be accidentally exposed to, like the surface a light is reflecting off of, "clear" safety goggles or even direction of exposure
last video accidentally weighing out 10x more of a potent untested chemical to injest, this video you're in the hospital with eye tentacles. You've just earned yourself the nickname Donny Don't. In seriously tho I love your work and glad you're ok pls stay safe.
I don't know much about chemistry, but I work with eyes in a regional hospital, the sensation of sandpaper when moving your eyes with eyelids closed is usually due to an inflammation in the papillar surface. Can be caused by disruption of the proportion of fluid components;, salts, proteins, lipids.. chemists will know better what of this it is. Best of luck.
PLEASE MAKE A SECOND CHANNEL CALLED LABNOPEZ talking about all of the things that you shouldn’t do in chemistry, and maybe demonstrating some of them for safety purposes!
Praying for your health and safety. I'm sorry this happened to you. Thank you for posting this and sharing it with us, you've undoubtably saved many others through this video. I have found that sometimes when we burn the skin near our eyes, it doesnt hurt right away and it takes a while till we really feel it. You may flush it out but the pain is still there for a while.
Exposure to anything that damages the outer layer of your eye will give you the sandpaper feeling. Yeah it could be from UV, but personally when I got UV burnt that bad the sensitivity to light was the biggest pain, which you didn't mention. And I also highly doubt it was the magnesium. So yeah like you said maybe some vapour singed the outer layer of your eye or something, not enough to eat through anything but enough to cause a bit of surface damage.
this 💯should be a pinned comment. similar injuries happened to the poor souls at that cringe crypto party where they used unfiltered UV biocide lamps as a black light on the dancefloor and everyone suffered corneal burns.
I don't believe so, since I've handled far more intense magnesium flashes before (and more of them in a row or over a longer period of time), and never had photokeratitis from it. My chlorosulfonic and nitric acid videos actually both had similar tests, and I was fine afterward (ironically, the chlorosulfonic acid video also had me dealing with POCl3)!was
Since we don't know how it happened I'd argue there's not much we can learn here except be extra careful, which should be the default when dealing with dangerous substances.
Just be glad you didn't have to get any injections in your eye. I have had to get one every 2 months or so for the past 5 years along with getting to look directly at a green laser 4 times trying to fix an injury to one of my eyes.
my guess is that when the plate shattered, it launched micro shrapnel everywhere and one thing led to another, maybe it was in your hair, didn't rinse out completely, dried on your head, and worked its way into your eyes
Your nose and eyes are connected via tearducts, if a chemical is the cause of irritation then the nose and throat would become irritated as the chemical gets flushed out of the eyes. He says "I've burned more magnesium for longer without protection and haven't had this issue before", the problem with UV light is that it's radiation, it follows the inverse square law. If you are "one unit" away from a source and you move one more unit away, you double the distance but quarter the exposure, move one more unit away and you're three times further away but only getting one ninth the exposure (distance=1, exposure is 1/1, distance=2, exposure is 1/(2x2), distance=3, exposure is 1/(3x3), etc...) Simply leaning in a little closer, maybe not blinking at the right moment because you're expecting the flash, can be the difference between a radiation injury you recover from without incident and sunburn on your cornea.
Welder fabricator here, you have yourself flash burn. The sandpaper description is all I had to hear. Can happen welding, or looking at the sun, or magnesium related things. I’ve seen people get it from magnum flashers on the 4th which are primarily magnesium based I believe. You made the right call going and flushing em out given it was unknown at the time but my $ is on flash burn or as some call it arc burn.
Once was destilling quite a bit of the stuff for a reaction. Even tho it was in good fumehood, oh boy... I could smell it like for a week after that very strongly, not enjoying food and having problems breathing at night. Since then, I kinda get nauseous only seeing the structure. Good prep btw.
I've had a shower activate/release chemicals in my fingers and cause burning (or whatever I touched to burn) a few times. Your outer layer of dead skin on your fingers is a good absorber of some chemicals (especially oils). Locked up in the dry skin they do almost nothing. Then later when you shower, your skin gets moist, puffs up a bit, releasing the oils and contaminating anything you touch.
Delayed effects are so nasty. Sometimes they can appear even something like a day or two later like IIRC can happen with glacial acetic acid and formic acid in lungs.
On the rare occasion I'm up that late working, the same thing can happen to my eyes, I've deduced it's a combination of eye strain and skin oils getting into my eyes. Rubbing my eyes introduces more oils making it worse. Working with the chemicals previously that day might have made you more worried about the symptoms. Even when I try to wash my eyes and face it still doesn't help a whole lot and it feels a lot like you described.
I performed a couple of reactions with molten salts in steel containers and threads always fail. The best way is to weld a bottom to the pipe, but that welding has to be done as well as possible otherwise salts will leak through any tiny crack. About the eye irritation, it really resembles how phosgene attacks the lungs after a few hours delay. Who knows, maybe it was caused by some byproduct, not the phosphoryl trichloride.
Seems to be a known thing, that the symptoms of phosphorus oxychloride exposure can be delayed. I do remember that, due to steric hindrance, the reaction with alcohols is slow unless a nucleophile catalyst is used (pyridine is good for pocl3). That really sucks. I might have been a bit gung ho in the lab but I wouldn't screw around at home tbh.
Brother gave himself chemical arc eyes😅 thank goodness you are okay dude. It reminded me of an old Discovery Channel tv show where they did the "worst" jobs possible. There was one episode where the host goes to work at a fireworks facility and the owner (who worked with him) warned him that one of the chemicals they were working with (i think it was dextrose? It was a long time ago) will make his eyes really uncomfortable when he gets to bed and to just let his eyes water away. Cheers!
I think it's entirely possible you did get welder's eye. Your description of the symptoms is pretty much spot on for that. It won't necessarily happen for every bright flash that hits your eye. Unless you spend 12 hours a day, 6 days a week staring right at a strong UVC source-like, say, a welder-saying that those flashes didn't affect you doesn't mean a whole lot. There's also the fact that you were burning magnesium _and_ phosphoryl chloride. Maybe the two reacted in a way that created a much stronger UVC output. Or maybe when it was mixed with any of the other compounds and burned. ...or maybe it had nothing to do with any of that. Idunno, I'm not a biographist. Point being, more research needs to be done before ruling it out. Don't mean to give you grief or nothing; just putting it out there.
Not true. It only takes a few seconds of direct unshaded exposure to a welding arc to flash burn your eyes. Distance is your friend in this situation because of the inverse square law.
I learned enough about chemistry to know that I know nothing about chemistry, which put an end to my lab coat explorations before I had a permanently detrimental event only one step beyond where you ended up after this dramatic adventure. Be safe.
Your symptoms sound a lot like exposure to UV light, i.e. it started later that night, you felt like sand was in your eyes, and washing didn't help. Perhaps the burning magnesium with extra brightness from the POCl3 released more UV light than you are used to. Even a normal Mg fire can damage your eyes.
Nice video! This seems to be the same thing that happens to welders that dont use a mask or other people working close to a welder withought wearing eye protection. The symptoms are the same, it starts watering your eyes after a few hours and then you feel like there is sand between your eyelids. Very painful. Hope you are doing well now.
I helped a guy do a whole mess of welding one day many long years ago - without proper eye protection - the eye problem you describe sounds very similar to mine...they called it "weld flash" from looking at the bright aura while the dude was welding
Agreed, there are stupid things on the internet: there are people who try to make phosphoryl chloride in their garage without a fume hood or safety equipment, based on a procedure from an online forum that seemed too good to be true, without doing any additional research.
The green stuff looks like AlCl3, if it -reacts with moisture- is contaminated with FeCl3. At Uni, older aluminium chloride reagents always looked like that
This sounds exactly like welders flash like everyone else said before. I've had the same symptoms after looking for a split second in a stick welding arc. Best thing to do is cry yourself to sleep. Perhaps that burning magnesium reaction with POCl3 produced a different wavelength of light (UV, infrared) differing from other past experiments? What about the burning lithium aluminum hydride? I'm no scientist....not yet at least lol
Last but not Least , MASK YOU USIN IS FOR CAR PAINTS ( Paint Liquid Molecules Stick to Filter ) , NEXT TIME YOU BURN/EVAPORISE STUFF , USE GAS MASK " MP-4 " AND/OR " MG -2 " " PG -1 " " FM 12" ❤
I have to agree with the flash burn theory. I spent 45 years as a welder and your symptoms sound exactly like flash burnt eyes. Nothing but time helps, and it can be cumulative, where a second exposure might only need to be partly as bad to produce symptoms. The only thing I ever found to help the pain was using slices of raw potato on my eyes with a damp cloth and rest. For some reason, the potato seems to pull the heat from you eyes and it reduces the pain. Go figure. My guess is something was different in your magnesium and it made harder uv than you expected for some reason. Maybe different chemical formula?
It wasn't the magnesium that nerfed your eyeballs. This vapors form acids upon contact with the Alveoli, which are a mucus membrane. The conjunctiva of your eyes is also a mucus membrane. Either the fumes reacted upon contact with your eyes, or a byproduct of the reactivity tests did it.
back in 1970, having the foundation of engineering schooling, I was to choose Mechanical or Electrical engineering my natural strengths. I had had a variety of chemistry experiments with highschool friends, but I chose Electrical Engineering, as computers and Very Large Scale Integrated circuits were becoming more prominent in the market, a future promising, but with your video of the day, and as messy and threatening as a Chemical Engineering Degree might have become, I'm so much happier surviving to retirement without the hands-on-risks enthusiasm might have caused me. Regards
Phosphorus is fascinating to me... Because on one hand, it and all its forms seem to actively want to kill, but, on the other hand, it's required to hold DNA together and thus life wouldn't happen without it. Why, Phosphorus, why?!?!
@@user255 Phosphorus spits. It actively comes after you in its elemental form and all it wants to do is set you on fire. Name another element that does that. Go ahead. I'll wait.
I don't know exactly what your yellow compound was, but it looks quite a bit like what you get when you react phosphines with lithium. I think it's phosphide.
I remember synthesizing this on first year inorg chem course. It wwas fun dropping it in water and seeing it run around in it like a tiny little drop of angry corrosive mercury
Shame YT age restricted this but its not surprising as you did _something_ that caused injury to yourself. What that was is a great question. Lots of theories in the comments. The good news is eyes heal quickly. And to be honest those eye tube looking things look to me like they would feel really good.
I've handled a lot of magnesium, both in an industrial setting where hundreds of kilos of ferromagnesium is burned daily and privately. You would have to stare at a lot of Mg burning to get this kind of condition unless you are super sensitive, it wasn't that.
I can't believe RU-vid demonitized this because you put in a warning about how the chemical is dangerous. Seriously RU-vid, what the fuck is wrong with you?
As a welder that sounds exactly what happens to me when i get flash burn.I would assume a chemical burn could do the same its miserable glad all is well.
Sounds like the same symptoms as an arch welding flash. I have had few over the years and what you describe is how an arch welding flash unfolds. Just an observation.
Consider yourself lucky they had the lenses, i had a cars coolant system ( at full operating temp) burst and send a jet directly into my right eye, they didn't have these lenses at the hospital, so they had to use saline bags and squirt 7 litres in my eye while i pried my eyelids apart, until the ph returned to normal
those eye burns does sound very identical to a UV flash a welder can get if not using a mask. Especially with the sandpaper description. It must have been one of those things you ignited
Jestem pewien, że to, co opisujesz, to wina światła UV. Pracowałem z tym odczynnikiem i ze światłem UV, zawsze mnie oczy bolały po UV-C, gdy nie nosiłem ochrony.
Previous exposures tobthat kind of light can cause *cumulative* damage. It doesn't seem like the previous ones did anything until the one that goes past the tipping point.
Do you think the light from the magnesium burning could've been different when introduced to this chemical? I'm not that knowledgeable about this stuff but it's something to consider
Sounds like burnt eyes, happens a lot to welders. Delayed response, feels just like you mentioned. While you are working your eyes are catching UV light from direct eyesight with the object producing the wavelength and reflected wavelength from the immediate area. If it were chemical burns it would have likely been an immediate presence, unless you were working with different forms of radiation. Then you would be dealing with a significantly different issue. UV burns to the eyes present just like you discribed in the video. Those contact issues suck at first but reduce the recovery time. Stay safe
I'm leaning towards welder flash having personal had it happen to me. The only other thing I could thing of that would cause the irritation to happen that long after would be you got some of the Phosphoryl Chloride in your eyes and it slowly turned into acid when it reacted with the water on your eyes, but I imagine that would happen quickly.
I've been toying with the idea of mixing blue lotus and amanita muscaria (muscimol and aporphine) Gotta use some drying agent and probably find some good binding solution for these compounds, but first and foremost make concentrate of both.. Because let me tell you, mixing these molicules are the best sleep aid possible to obtain.
Where'd ya get the LiAH? That seems like it'd be difficult for the typical home chemist. Hell even Sodium Borohydride seems next to impossible to just order.
100% flash burn from watching the magnesium burn with your naked eyes.. I've had flash burn from tack welding without a hood before.. I experienced the exact same onset and systems as you..
Making nerve gas precursors - no thanks. I’ve worked with a lot of toxic and dangerous materials - but organophosphorous compounds still make me nervous.
Your symptoms sound very much like welder's "arc eye" I got it once 15 years ago and sand paper under the eye lids is exactly how I described it to the chemist. It's essentially sunburn on the outer layer of the eye. Top 5 of the most painful things I've experienced. It would be really interesting to quantify how much UV is released with the magnesium burning. My gut says no way it could have dumped that amount of UV but given your description and the hours of delay it does sound like arc eye.
Is not lithium aluminum hydride a monitored chemical-due to its use in synthesis of many controlled substances? Which uncontrolled (inactive) analog of desoxyephedrine are you looking at creating?
The shower may have caused the unpleasant reaction. Hydrolysis! Take care of yourself, get well soon. The reaction of table salt and P4010 is strange. It will be interesting to see which synthesis route you take for LAH. I once reduced P2NP in THF with LAH and it was very difficult to get THF completely dry, in the end I used the LAH for drying.
maybe the flames you produced were too bright. I once looked into a welder accidentally and later that day i experienced the exact same symptoms you described. But i didnt get these contact lenses...all i got were eyedrops and 2 days of pain^^
Weird. What you're describing, from the delayed onset to the intense sandpaper feel with eyelids closed is exactly the same as arc flash. As in the eyeball sunburn you get from staring at a welding arc. Are you positive it was chemical related that day?
