[danieltillett]

I have always had a huge fear of HF, but as a biologist I rarely had to work with it. The chemical that I did work a lot with that was rather nasty was phenol (carbolic acid). Splash that on you, or worse get it in your eyes, and it hurts. I luckily never got it in my eyes, but I had a few cap-failing eppendoff tubes (being vortexed) end up all over my face. Not nice.

The worst horror story I was told about phenol was of a grad student a few years before me doing a large DNA extraction using phenol in a 3 litre measuring cylinder. They filled it with phenol and DNA solution and then sealed the end using parafilm (a stretchy plastic membrane). They then mixed the solution by inverting the cylinder. You won't be surprised to learn that phenol dissolves parafilm and the phenol ran straight down the student's arm and they ran straight off to hospital.

[3chelon]

Phenol... ah, the nostalgia. As a teenager, I once added a drop of fuming nitric acid to some phenol. I understood that I may be able to make picric acid that way. I just didn't appreciate quite how unstable the resulting compound would be until the instant the acid hit the phenol and the glass beaker disappeared in the resulting detonation. I was not wearing googles (of course), and to this day I am thankful no glass hit my eyes. I'm also extremely thankful I only added a single drop of acid. Scary substances indeed!

[classichasclass]

We had a tanker truck full of the stuff overturn a couple weeks ago in a remote area and I got a call from the hazmat guys about running a calcium gluconate line if the stuff escaped containment. (I work for the health department.) They usually use oral tape, but they were worried it wouldn't work fast enough and they couldn't get medical aid fast enough since the nearest hospital to the truck was about 80 miles away.

Fortunately they were able to right the truck without any spilling.

That one you probably _do_ want a Prop 65 notification for ...

[wbl]

Prop 65 doesn't apply to acute toxicity.