[spijdar]

Hydrofluoric acid and other "fluorinating" chemicals like chlorine trifluoride really are horrific. Most of my experience in chemistry is from a brief stint working as a student helper in an undergrad chemistry lab, and (thankfully) never encountered HF, but we were told many times just how dangerous it is.

It's been a while, but I remember the biggest danger isn't the acidity itself, not even being a strong acid, but fluorine's tendency to "deep dive". It just sort of slowly eats into things and creates layers that are comparatively hard to remove. So if you spill hydrochloric acid or whatever on yourself, you wash it off, maybe get some severe tissue damage, but it's localized and washes off.

On the other hand, the HF tends to stick around, and as a fun side-effect, the fluoride salts it creates are poisonous to the body. And HF is tame compared to some fluorine chemicals used in chip etching/production...