Comment on Basic

• BestBouclettes@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Any base that could be dangerous enough to have to evacuate a building? When thinking about bases, I’m thinking bleach

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  • shneancy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    though i’m not a chemist so take my words with a grain of salt -

    google says the most dangerous bases can cause skin and eye damage, and be very flammable if they were to dissolve aluminium (two different chemicals). So I guess worst case scenario you open the windows, lock the room, and come back with protective equipment to clean up your mess

    you probably wouldn’t handle something, that if dropped, would be dangerous enough to need a whole building evacuated outside of a dedicated room without wearing a full hazman suit and adhering to additional 100 precautions and safety measures

    unless you’re the sort of guy to use a screwdriver to play with the demon core, but that’s not a liquid chemical base and hopefully won’t happen again

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    • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      You’d probably do the work under a hood too.

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      • _edge@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Only when there are guest in the lab

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    • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      you probably wouldn’t handle something, that if dropped, would be dangerous enough to need a whole building evacuated outside of a dedicated room without wearing a full hazman suit and adhering to additional 100 precautions and safety measures

      You underestimate academia.

      Also, going through the old chemicals of some academic labs can lead to having the bomb squad called because they didn’t dispose of an unstable reagent 30 years ago.

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  • flora_explora@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I was curious as well and in this article the only mention of dangerous bases is tert-Butyl lithium (“t-BuLi is very pyrophoric, it readily reacts with air catching fire, that’s why it has to be handled and stored with very special care, always under a protective inert atmosphere of pure nitrogen or argon”). But in that case you couldn’t just drop it on the ground outside of a vent?

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  • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    BRB, looking up the pH of chlorine triflouride…

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    • marcos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yes, this is the kind of substance that would promptly react to protons, what would be a base-like behavior if it also didn’t promptly react to hydroxyl, what would be an acid-like behavior.

      Given that it will consistently turn water into plasma, I guess it technically has a PH of 0.

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  • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    tert-butyl lithium. Ignites on contact with air. Often used in conjunction with flammable solvents, so large fires and explosions are possible when working with large enough quantities.

    As far as safety SOPs go, nearly any chemical spill of a large enough quantity warrants evacuating the area in my chemical safety plans. For some institutions, this is as little as 1 liter or 500g of material. This can obviously be overkill if you spill something that is relatively inert and non-toxic such as water or NaCl.

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    • booty@hexbear.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      spilling a bottle of water in my house: aw shit better get the mop

      spilling a bottle of water in the lab: aw shit now we gotta evacuate and call in the chemical spill guys

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      • MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I prefer to flood the entire lab if I’m going to make a scheme. Time to use the chemical shower with no drain!

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    • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Very nice, thanks for the reply!

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