Toxicology Data of Hydrogen Chloride gas:
"Toxic - may be fatal if inhaled. Severe irritant. Very harmful by inhalation, ingestion or through skin contact. Extremely corrosive. Skin contact with vapour or liquid can cause serious burns."
Andreas is easily the most quiet of the people in our lab. It is debatable whether this is because he doesn't understand the conversation around him or if he is just quiet by nature. In any event I'm sure he's not exactly Chris Rock, even in German. So last weekend at the club Andreas had this relatively attractive asian-ish girl pushed at him. Honestly it was too dark to tell what her ethnicity was. Not that it really matterns anyway. What was obvious though, was how intoxicated she was. She quite fancied him, it seemed. Turns out over the course of the ten or so minutes they were together she grabbed his nuts. Apparently this doesn't happen in Germany, or at least not to him. The first week we were here he got hit on by a pack of married women with whom he was reluctant to admit he spoke english. Andreas: 2, Thorsten and Greg: 0. It's gotta be the headwind.
Andreas has been the centre of attention this week as the nut-grabbing story has been spreading like wildfire through the lab. This demonstrates how little of a life any one of the rest of us has. I figure his will be the story of focus until something more obscene happens to someone else.
We all got paid yesterday. So, naturally, we figured we would head on down to the casino. Apparently they have this amazing all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. Slowly I'm managing to root out all of the all-you-can-eat places in town. I swear it's only a coincidence. Remember how I joked about losing all of my rent money at the craps table?? Well, stay tuned.
Last night Laura, this girl from the lab, and I checked out this "Carousel of Nations" festival down by the river. It's a real carousel. I think about six countries were represented, including Canada. The chinese booth was hawking your average chinese takeout and the mexican folks were selling 7-11 nachos. The best part was the "Africa" stall. I mean seriously, can you honestly encompass an entire continent's worth of cuisine in a single double telephone booth wide carnival shop??? The real kicker was that the "african" meal consisted of baked beans, mac and cheese and pork on a stick. I didn't know baked beans made it to africa. In any event, Laura's family is from Nigeria and she didn't see anything african about her meal. Although I'm sure if the Africans had their own Carousel of Nations we could replace the North American stall with a McDonalds and call it even.
Last week I took my first shot at handling the HCl gas cylinder. I have this reaction that requires me to bubble the gas through my reaction flask for about an hour. All of the material I work with is air and water sensitive so everything is done under an atmosphere of nitrogen flowing from a line running through the back of my workstation. Setting up the apparatus and conecting all of the gas hoses correctly while excluding all atmospheric air can be ridiculously complicated. So when I finally had it all set up, I turned on the main valve, then the regulator and finally, the needle valve to release the gas. As I turn the needle valve all of my hoses fly off of everywhere and start shooting clouds of HCl all over the room. Jenny turns from her station to see what's going on and gets a facefull of gas. I close the main valve, slam the fumehood shut and punch the emergency exhaust button as we fly out of the lab.
Jenny, despite inhaling a facefull of lethal gas, is fine. This is easily the most dangerous chemical we have. When Sharonna left she told me not to touch the regulator vavle, as it had already been set correctly. So I didn't touch the regulator valve. Turns out somehow the regulator got turned up to about 7 atmospheres or so. The pressue of the gas coming from the cylinder was seven times the pressure of the air pushing against it from the room. Therefore, when it came screaming out, it burst all of my hose connections and shot up the room. Nobody blames me. It could have happened to anyone. But the lesson, as my father points out, is this: always check your own equipment. Jenny, veteran of many a lab fire, was so wonderfully calm about it. I nearly wet myself for the second time this summer.
You think they give out awards for that???
6 comments:
Aha! First comment! Let me say that I am rather relieved that one can survive a facefull of the "most lethal gas" that you'll be working with this summer. I assume that means that you'll be coming home all in one piece, and that is good news. I don't really want to be the only youth leader with a class four license...I mean...I would miss you. Glad to hear you're still alive and well!
Johnny was a chemist
but he is no more
for what he thought was H20
was H2SO4
:D
I think you deserve an award Greg. If not for spraying toxic gas everywhere, you at least deserve an award for your superb writing skills. I laugh ever time I read your blog. So, I here by award you with the "Johnny thinks your neat" award.
Johnny Menold
Listen to your father. You should check out all your own equipment.
it seems as though you and Thorsten should take a few lessons from Andreas, and polish off your Pimpin' skills. lol
and ya, that African stall was quite the disgrace. One can only shake their head.
It's too bad i missed all that HCl action. Jeezzzz* it would have spiced up my day :) hhaha
sincerely,
~this girl from the lab ;)
If HCl gas is by far the most lethal gas that you work with, you'll be fine. HCl gas is not even close to being as lethal as other hazardous chemicals in chemistry. I used 800,000 lbs last year and breathed my fair share. I'm still kicking. But just the same...be careful with it.
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