Difference between revisions of "H&S Dangerous Gases"
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== | ==Brake Cleaner (chlorinated)== | ||
Phosgene (WW1 gas) can be produced from unevaporated Brake Cleaner and Heat. With Argon (e.g. MIG/TIG welding)as well, phosgene can flash off and incapacitate you in seconds! | Phosgene (WW1 gas) can be produced from unevaporated Brake Cleaner and Heat. With Argon (e.g. MIG/TIG welding)as well, phosgene can flash off and incapacitate you in seconds! | ||
Revision as of 11:19, 5 November 2009
Brake Cleaner (chlorinated)
Phosgene (WW1 gas) can be produced from unevaporated Brake Cleaner and Heat. With Argon (e.g. MIG/TIG welding)as well, phosgene can flash off and incapacitate you in seconds!
Read the back of the can.. if it says chlorinated then make sure you know what NOT to do with it... no heat and no other rare gases.
Freon (refrigerant)
combined with combustion products can produce phosgene!
Quote form general forum link below
Been exposed to phosgene twice without really knowing what it was and yes it is very ver bad stuff. one time years ago when we simply drained refrigerant without recovering it i was draining a auto a/c and left the hoses under the hood while i pulled the car into the shop. simply letting the freon near the air inlet was enuf. walked by the rear of the car and my lungs froze up. other time was also drining freon near a salamander type heater.
lucky to live i guess.
Electrical Contact cleaners
Good electrical contact cleaners (chlorinated ones) can also produce this phosgene gas
Overheated Teflon (PTFE)
Supposedly 450F is the point at which this gets dangerous.. sounds very close to what is achieved in normal bacon and eggs type cooking, or wehn left on with nothing in it.
Quote/ Teflon is also a baddie. When heated above 500deg F or so, it can emit dangerous gas. I personally spoke to the guy who discovered this little factoid while working for a nuke plant. They used to think Teflon was great stuff until this was known.
Your Teflon coated cookware can do this if you leave an empty pan on a burner for a few minutes. Since that time, I've looked specifically for non-coated cookware.
The bad stuff from overheated teflon (PTFE) and the other fluorinated plastics (eg in high temp 'O' rings) is hydrofluoric acid, not phosgene.
HF is well capable of penetrating through gloves and then through your flesh. By the time you feel tingling the damage is done, and that flesh and bone will probably die, once it does start to hurt, the pain is supposed to be out of all proportion to the size of the affected area.
As a gas, it will not only burn your lungs but will also react with calcium in your body, potentially causing a heart attack.
HF is an ingredient of some of the passivating solutions for cleaning stainless, and the solutions for cleaning car wheels and windscreens. lovely stuff. Not!
Welding brazing fuxes
Some welding and brazing fluxes contain fluorides. Exposing them to sulphuric acid will liberate HF (sulphuric acid displaces (almost) all other acids from their salts)
Fire Extinguishers
The worst fire extinguishers for phosgene were the Halon / Carbon Tetrachloride ones.
40 years ago, Navy, we had a foam dispenser aboard ship for oil fires, Diesel boat. Were told that using the foam would create Phosgene gas when it hit hot metal.
Dry Cleaning Solvents
Dry cleaning solvents are all bad when overheated, a poster on a british HSM board gave an example of almost gassing himself when he poured CCl4 on a wastebin fire in his workshop.
