[aazaa]

> n-BuLi is short for n-butyllithium, which bursts into flame if exposed to oxygen or water.

It looks like the author is overselling some of the dangers here.

While you really don't want to dump n-BuLi into water, you have no reason to either.

The problem child of the class to which n-BuLi belongs is t-BuLi. That will spontaneously ignite in air, whereas n-BuLi will not. There was a very high-profile case I believe at UCLA a few years back in which a student using t-BuLi in the lab caused a fire with it and ended up dying.

https://cen.acs.org/articles/87/i31/Learning-UCLA.html

Also, I find this article confusing in the way it's written. Take the title, for example. It gives the impression that the author is describing his own efforts to make remdesivir ("we").

What he's really describing is some preps he found in the literature. And with a little too much hyperbole for my taste.

[Metacelsus]

nBuLi is tame compared to tBuLi, I agree. But on large scale the reaction with air can generate enough heat to ignite. (And with humid air it's worse.)