Comment by kragen

Comment by kragen 2 days ago

9 replies

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I've seen an MSDS for sodium chloride USP that recommends against use in food, and says that you should wash your skin with abundant water for 15 minutes if you contact it and seek immediate medical attention if it gets in your eyes (after, of course, spending 15 minutes in the eyewash station). It also warns you to keep it away from sources of ignition, that it should not be released into the environment, and that you should not handle it without gloves and face protection.

Here, this is the first sodium chloride MSDS I googled up: https://www.fishersci.com/store/msds?partNumber=S64010&produ...

throwanem 2 days ago

Fortunately, HF is as safe as NaCl. Or so I take you to suggest, this otherwise totally failing to follow from anything anyone has said...

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  • kragen 2 days ago

    Sevensor said they would like to make Etsy moms using HF to frost shot glasses reread the MSDS for HF. This would only benefit them if MSDSes were reliable guides to the risks of working with different materials. Unfortunately, as evidenced by my example, they are not. Therefore, the Etsy moms, having reread the MSDS, might reasonably dismiss the information contained in it, unfortunately failing to protect themselves against the very real dangers it poses. Furthermore, given the astounding lack of thought evident in the NaCl MSDS, it is reasonable to guess that many MSDSes you find for HF will propose "safety" measures that are actually counterproductive, such as wearing gloves.

    I thought all of this was obvious from my comment.

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    • sevensor 2 days ago

      You don’t wear gloves when you work with HF? You are banned from my lab. 8 mil nitrile. Always check for cracks and pinholes before use.

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      • pedvide 2 days ago

        Part of my PhD involved lots of fluoride synthesis using HF. I always used gloves (changing them very frequently). My advisor never used them for the following reason: if a droplet of HF lands on your glove you won't notice, but HF will go through the glove. If it lands on your bare hand chances are you'll notice it and wash them immediately. I could never follow his advise, but I did change gloves pretty much every step in the synthesis just in case.

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      • kragen a day ago

        Conventional wisdom is to not wear gloves when working with HF, as pedvide points out. It may not be to your advantage to ban people like pedvide's advisor from your lab, especially if at some point they're refereeing your papers—though, at least from my point of view, there should be no such personal-offense considerations involved, it would be unsurprising if someone were insufficiently detached for such a personal snub to prejudice them against you.

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