[Brady] What is the most dangerous chemical you've ever handled? The most dangerous chemical, I believe, was one called cyclopentadienyl nickel nitrosyl. It was claimed at the time to be one of the most poisonous chemicals in the world. It's a blood red coloured liquid - it looks pretty evil. And I dropped the bottle on the floor, and it broke. But fortunately only the neck of the bottle broke, so I could pick it up, and none came out. The molecule, or the material I've had to handle with the most care, let's say, is probably tertiary Butyllithium. And, I used this as a PhD student, and it's a fantastic reagent, we use it as a strong base when we're doing synthetic chemistry. But, if you take a concentrated solution of tertiary Butyllithium, in a syringe and you squirt it, it bursts into flames instantaneously when it hits the atmosphere. I suppose it's similar to many other things that Steve has shown us on some of his videos, like the Zinc chemistry. Tertiary Butyllithium, actually, is one of the most - one of the molecules that I have the utmost respect for. Probably the most dangerous situation that I've found myself in whilst handling compounds is when I had an ampoule, - so an ampoule for those of you who don't know, is a bottle which is completely sealed. That's all glass, and you have to break it with a hammer to get to the contents. and I had a 250ml bottle of SO_3, and I needed to pour this into a vial which we could open and close, or a bottle we could open and close. So I got my hammer, I'd pre-scored the glass, and - I don't have an ampoule here today but - you can imagine a sort of - a bottle, and then it goes up to a neck, and you get a thin piece at the top, and you hit that off with a hammer. So I did this, I'd three pairs of gloves on, two lab coats, and this was all wrapped round. We were in a very good fume hood with scrubbers and all the rest of it. I hit this off, and immediately, as soon as SO_3 hits water in the air, you get sulfuric acid. And there were just clouds and clouds of sulfuric acid. And there I was pouring this stuff in to the glass bottle, as quick as I could. Put the top on. It was like "Wow, thank goodness for that." And the - I'd three pairs of very thick gloves on, The outer one, it completely dissolved. It was black. The second one, was pretty black as well. Luckily, the third one was intact, we were okay. But, yeah, that was a scary, scary time. And it was good fun. [He laughs]
The last one, Sulfur Trioxide... fuck that.
Here's a whole book (PDF) Ignition! with similar stories from the dawn of the rocket era.
And a chemists blog Things I won't work with
Both are great reads!
There is a website called "Things I won't Work With" and it talks about things like this. Most of them are absolutely terrifying.
See it here
I think dioxygen diflouride deserves an honourable mention.
The prep for it is so batshittingly insane that, quote:
Same goes for chlorine trifluoride, which is such a good oxidiser that it sets wet sand on fire (let that sink in a for a second...). Oh and in the process, it gives off hydrofluoric acid! OH JOY :D
Dimethylmercury has got to be one of the worst ones out there. Yikes.
I work as a chemist for an environmental response company, we mainly deal in chemical spills, oil spills, industrial hazardous waste disposal etc. By far the scariest chemical I have dealt with was hydrofluoric acid. For those of you unfamiliar with chemistry in this regard, HF makes most every other acid and base look like a papercut next to an amputation. I chose that analogy because one story I recall involved a young lab tech who spilled approx. 100ml, or about the contents worth of one small chicken egg, onto his thigh.
Basically, HF readily permeates through skin tissue bonding hydrogen and fluoride ions with the calcium in your blood cells and bone, (picture a feeding frenzy on bone and tissue). The man used a calcium gel, which is the only method of neutralizing this acid and stopping the chemical reaction. He also flushed the area with plenty of water until the medics arrived. They immediately had to amputate his leg at the groin because his skin and bone suffered too much necrosis and it was spreading. you'd think that's the worst of it but Noooope, he died two weeks later due to hypocalcaemia.
That was a 70% solution. I had to take Geiger readings on the top of an off gassing 30,000 Gal tank of 100% HF. I was in full acid suit attire and scba, but it was still a very harrowing experience. HF is the scariest acute toxin and corrosive known to man in my opinion. The cyanides are all scary too, of course, but they won't eat away your bones. I forgot to add that it is a nerve agent so if you come into diluted solutions of HF, say <12% you won't see nor feel the immediate effects of tissue necrosis for 4 to 24 hours... YIKES!
Edit:
Obligatory edit- OMG! GOLD HOLY WOW comment.... In all seriousness, thank you lets make love..
The first guy was awesome
That first guy is exactly how I pictured how a chemist should look.
A little disheveled, glasses that make their eyes look humongous, and a slight twist to look a bit like a mad scientist.
He's so beautiful it makes my heart swell.
I don't know if people remember that t-Butyl Li was responsible for the death of a grad student at UCLA. It's a tragedy and a reminder to wear PPE in the lab.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/05/ucla-chemist-trial-safety-violations-linked-sheri-sangji-death