With all due respect to the chemists, medical personnel and professionals at handling dangerous substances here...... What I relate below are my own actual experiences in using and abusing many of the aforementioned chemicals.
The tales related should in no way be considered recommendations, scientific fact or even a suggestion. CPF, its sponsors, management nor even your humble author should not be held liable or responsible should anyone decide to use or abuse any of the substances mentioned, or to not seek emergency medical attention should they be exposed to them.
I relate the following merely to share my own, actual, personal, past experiences and perhaps prevent panic should the readers accidentally face similar exposures.
Take all of the following with a grain of salt.... I'm apparently not really fully human, therefore your personal experience will probably be different and quite horrible
Nonetheless:
I've worked extensively
(in the real world, often outside of properly equipped laboratories and often lacking even the most basic safety precautions.) with concentrated Hydrofluoric acid, concentrated Nitric acid, concentrated Sulphuric acid, concentrated Hydrochloric acid, Mercury metal, Mercury 'salts', Sodium Cyanide, Potasium Cyanide, and other really nasty stuff.
And like an idiot, I've often been pretty careless with nearly all of it.... (Familiarity breeds contempt, especially when you are mentally defective in the first place.
)......
(You ain't lived until you have nearly died from a case of mercury vapor poisoning AND Cyanide (ingestion... some halfway spent cyanide splashed in my mouth, and I swallowed some of it.) poisoning at the same time..... I was alone, out in the middle of nowhere, refining gold and silver through various processes, 300 miles from the nearest crude medical facility and no way to get there.... For a while I expected to die, and for a while I was worried I wouldn't die..... That was the worst experience... for about four days my entire body hurt worse than anything short of every bone being broken, and nearly teeth nearly fell out from the mercury.)
Fortunately, a week later, I was capable of functioning and two weeks later, I was apparently fully recovered..... God (Or :devil
must have decided he didn't want me yet.
Of all those nasty things, even with all my bad, STUPID experiences, the only ones mentioned that worry me still are Hydrofluoric acid and Lye (Potassium hydroxide). I've always been careful with lye and never had it effect me, but I know what it can do and how quickly it does it because I had an adult friend when I was a kid get his hands and part of his face badly burned with some misused Drano, and just the sight of his hands and cheek a month or so later scared the crap out of me..
The main thing that scares me about hydrofluoric acid is its effect on your lungs..... The vapor reacts with the natural moisture there and a minimal breathing exposure can leave you short of breath for months, and a really bad case can literally eat you up from the inside out.... I worked with it in 55 gallon drums, about 10 gallons out in open vats at a time, and always used a gas mask rated for use with HF when using it indoors.
Nonetheless, I've had a little exposure to the vapor and a moderate amount of skin exposure to the liquid more than once. We always slathered a paste made of crushed calcium gluconate tablets and glycerine (both available in just about any halfway decent drugstore) on skin exposures and it seems to have worked.. I don't even have any scars or recurring eruptions. Definitely, definitely use rubber gloves, goggles, long sleeve shirts etc. when messing with any hydroflouric acid (or the more gentle but still nasty bifluoride compounds) and a HF approved gas mask if you are using more than a couple ounces at a time.
Not that I recommend it to you real humans, but the exposure to to the very minor amounts of HF from messing with LiIon is not something that I'd personally get overly concerned about. Just being aware that some small amount might be generated and that even a small amount could possibly cause short term,
or even long term problems.... but the odds are pretty good that it won't be something serious.
Nitric acid...
I've had direct skin exposure to it many times, inhaled the vapor all too often..... over exposure to the skin kind of tickles/itches. The vapor makes me cough, really concentrated vapor has made me retch and have to run out into fresh air. My main complaint about being stupid with Nitric acid is that it takes a week or so for the yellow stains it leaves on your skin to fade, and a few days for my lungs to get back to about normal from overexposure to the vapor..... but Silver Nitrate is much worse.... It turns your skin a deep purple that takes weeks to wear off.... (but I did eventually learn an 'ancient secret' that will take off silver nitrate stains quite well and quite simply.... Should you ever need to learn this 'secret' PM me.)
The main thing to worry about nitric acid... a lot of compounds you may accidentally make while misusing it can be very sensitive explosives.
The closest I have come to death with Nitric acid is when my wife nearly killed me for sticking a beaker of about 30% Nitric acid soultion (
with a dash of hydrochloric to speed the reaction) in the microwave to heat it up a bit to dissolve some copper encased in glass, and I forgot it was 'on', got sidetracked outside and fogged up the whole dang house house with a very acrid smoke/vapor/gas.
Hydrochloric acid..... On the skin, it can get kind of 'tingly'... The main danger is that if you breathe the concentrated vapor in a closed space it can kill you Or if it reacts with something else and produces one of the many very deadly chlorine compound gasses...... But if it doesn't kill you right off, you will probably get over it in a few days.
Sulphuric acid:
It eats 'organics" ....
You are organic.... If you keep your hand in a vat of it it will eventually eat your skin, muscle and bones...... But you will get bored LONG before it does major damage. The vapor is not particularly poisonous... But it can kill you by displacing oxygen and essentially smothering you. Short exposures of say 50% solution of it on my skin, it just gets kind of itchy.
The main long lasting effects of sulfuric acid that I have experienced is holes eaten in my clothes the next time I put them on.
With most acids (outside of hydrocyannic (prussic) acid) , it isn't actually that the vapors are poisonous in of themselves, especially in the short term; it is that they can 'exclude' oxygen to the point that there is nothing to breathe, or they merely irritate your lungs to the point that you cough yourself to death.
Cyanide: It can be absorbed through the skin and kill you, but it takes more exposure than one would imagine. Ingestion of a moderate amount will kill you in a quite unpleasant manner. The biggest danger is that you get a little acid (nearly any kind, including household vinegar) on it and produce hydrogen fluoride gas. (prussic acid) It doesn't take much of that in a closed space to kill you instantly. That is how the old 'gas chambers' worked, and an old NKVD/KGB assasination device was just a rubber bulb filled with a little prussic acid. That simple little device has killed several people, including a few very significant people, quite quickly and quietly.
Other than that, just be reasonably careful. It also makes an excellent fertilizer..
(ask me how I know about this particular side effect sometime).. (although I don't know as I'd care to eat any crops raised with a cyanide fertalizer
.
Mercury:
The metal itself is MUCH less dangerous than most people believe. The vapor can do major damage, but that is quite rare. Ingestion of mercury 'salts' ( compounds like mercury chloride) or some organic mercury compounds can cause permanent brain damage.
Generally flushing with lots of cool water will prevent major damage with short, partial exposure. Yes, the reaction with lye and water is what causes the burns from lye...... But lots and lots of water is better than nothing or anything else that 'normal' people will have available..... Just be sure to wash it OFF and AWAY... Not 'in'.
In general, the above experiences are with the 'stuff' at somewhere around room temperature.... usually, elevated temperatures will increase the 'negative effects'. Many of the substances will cause blindness if you get a significant amount in your eye(s).
Also, a lot of them are much more harmful in 'mucous membranes' than on regular skin, so ingestion or inhalation is usually much worse than skin exposure.
Don't try this at home. God protects fools (and drunkards)... That probably is the only reason that that I'm not dead or maimed. I fully expected to be walking down the street one day and just dissolve into a noxious puddle of goo prior to turning 40... So far I have avoided that fate by 15 years.
Get yourself to an emergency room if you are exposed to any of this stuff (or any of a myriad of other things). Just because I'm regularly an idiot about that kind of stuff is no reason for you to be.
But by the same token.... there is probably no reason to panic if you do get a minor exposure to something nasty or live in fear that your neighbor is as idiotic as me. There is a good chance you will survive things that media hype, urban legend and things that even the real, true professionals will tell you are very dangerous with even a slight exposure.
