[TheForge] Interesting Article

[Mike Spencer]

Charles wrote:

> I have a bottle of Hydroflouric acid I bought at the hardware store 
> years ago that scares the bejeezus out of me.

And well it should.  If you spill concentrated nitric acid on your
fingers, the skin shrivels and turns to mush but if you hasten to
flush it off, you just have a very nasty open wound.

Do the same with hydrofluoric and after you've flushed it copiously,
some of it can continue to penetrate the flesh, make its way to the
bone and commence to make your bones crumble. What would be a
first-aid situation for other strong acids is an ER or ICU case for
HF.

When I was a teenager, I ordered (from a distant supply house) a whole
crate of chemical stuff that no one locally would sell me and included
a gallon of HF.  Before opening it, I read up on the hazards and never
opened it.  Today you can't ship Oxpho-Blue(tm) gun-blue without
special hazardous materials provisions [1], never mind a gallon of HF in a
wooden crate. 


FWIW,
- Mike


[1] I hadda get a gunsmith to hand-carry a couple of bottles for me to
    Canada when he made his annual trek to get stuff for himself.

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^