| > He also said that even a small drop of HF on skin will cause a heart attack I really wish people in the know wouldn't spread stuff like this. HF isn't untreatably deadly like dimethylmercury. HF is a strong acid and should be treated as such. Most effects of HF are quite treatable as long as you haven't managed to somehow convert it into elemental fluorine gas. They key is that you have to know that you've had an HF incident. What IS nasty is that an HF burn probably doesn't hurt until far too late. HF reacts with calcium and can inactivate pain neurons. And, while a small droplet won't do it, a large HF burn can cause a heart attack because it soaks up a lot of the free calcium in your bloodstream. So, when you go in for treatment for an HF burn the doctor needs to start giving you calcium gluconate in order to resupply your calcium. HF is nasty, but not so nasty that semiconductor fabs work terribly hard to get rid of it. Piranha etch (HF and HNO3 at 70C) is bog standard and people work with it every day. Constrast this to Arsine gas (AsH3--flammable and toxic--oh, the joy!) which everybody works to get rid of. |