Comment by logifail
4 years ago
> At the risk of putting myself on a watchlist, They already know that, so They have an eye on certain kinds of labware, different precursors, and such. And They already have antidotes to some of these poisons.
Errm, maybe They Do.
On the other hand, I used to work in an organic chemistry research lab, and at least within my ex university's context, we could basically order anything we wanted from the standard chemical suppliers without anyone batting an eyelid. Pre-signed but otherwise blank order forms were freely handed out, you just filled in what compounds you wanted and handed it over, two days later it arrived and you collected it from Stores.
I personally ordered a compound for a reaction I was planning and it was only after it arrived - when I read the safety data sheet - that I realised just quite how toxic it was.
I backed carefully away from that particular bottle, and left it in the fridge, still sealed. Then found another - safer - way to do the reaction instead...
Right, and if you had ordered 3 barrels of the stuff, you'd get a visit from the feds.
> 3 barrels of the stuff
Barrels? Based on what the LD50 was / what the data sheet said, the bottle I briefly had in my hands - and yes, they did start shaking - would have done for a good proportion of the residents of a small city had it managed to be spread around in a form that would have been ingested.
Chemistry labs are typically well-stocked with quite a lot of fairly unpleasant things. They're also the places where a lot of genuinely amazing and potentially live-saving work gets done!
You can't just tease us like this! If not the actual chemical... maybe an analogue or something? Chemistry is one of my great fascinations lol.
2 replies →
Is that toxic bottle still sealed, in the fridge, after you've left the institution? I've had to deal with a few EHS situations like that.
> Is that toxic bottle still sealed, in the fridge, after you've left the institution?
Quite possibly!
The previous occupant of my bench area (and hence adjoining fridge space) left some barely-labeled custom radioactive compounds(!!) in the fridge me to find shortly after I took over that space, so I know how that feels.
After consulting suitably-trained personnel, the contents of the vials were then disposed of ... by pouring down a standard sink, with lots of running water.
Those were the days :eek:
How did you deal with it? I would expect they don't take returns.
The same thing that happens when someone quits.
The people finding these things have the same skill sets and access to the same handling/disposal facilities as the people leaving these things so it's very much a "oh my former coworker forgot to/didn't have an opportunity to dispose of X before departing, I'll just do it myself in the same manner he would have". Furthermore, these people have lives, they go on vacation and cover each other. The institutional knowledge of how to handles dangerous organic things necessarily exists in the institutions that do so.
13 replies →
You call your university's EHS department and tell them as much about what you know about the contents of the bottle (which may not be what is on the label). They seal off the lab, remove it, and using what they can determine about the contents, destroy it safely.
> I backed carefully away from that particular bottle, and left it in the fridge, still sealed. Then found another - safer - way to do the reaction instead...
I've wondered how manufacturing plants handle this. You back away because you're afraid of touching the stuff - how does a giant factory that produces and ships the stuff handle it?
It clearly can be handled, the question is what's the procedure to handle it correctly and do you trust your procedure? Manufacturer or someone regularly working with this kind of thing does know and trust, if you suddenly realize it wasn't quite what you signed up for backing off is clearly the better choice than trusting your guess at procedure. But risk can be managed a lot.
Although certainly over-confidence can also happen on the other end, e.g. if something that's quite similar to other dangerous things you work with suddenly has an additional trap. And Safety Datasheets are notorious for not necessarily representing actual in-use risks well.
The same way other dangerous stuff is made?
There is plenty of dangerous chemicals made on a huge scale - sulfuric acid, cyanide, explosives, ...
"They" are not proactive, because they know people hiding bad things need time and coordination. So, only taking notice (and notes) and investigating strange patterns is enough.
But also a lot of what the GP says doesn't apply, because on the case of terrorism, "They" is either the police or random people, so "They" definitively do not have antidotes or training on how to handle known poisons.
I've also worked in chemistry research labs and there are certain compounds (in the US) at least that will need approval. Anything on the DEA precursor list will do it. There are certain chemicals that are dual use for chemical weapons and chemotherapy synthesis (things to make melphalan for example). Those required some extra forms to order.
Flourine compound? Organic heavy metal? I'm curious.