When I was very first in the lab as a grad student, I was instructed to rinse certain pieces of washed glassware with acetone to remove the water and speed drying. I wasn’t wearing gloves and the acetone would splash over on my hands. I was always amazed at how quickly it would evaporate off my skin. Nobody told me it was being absorbed through my skin as well and carrying whatever crap was on it along with it right on to my liver, until one day the visiting senior scientist saw me and took pity on me.

And then there’s chromic/sulfuric acid … now that’s another ballgame

2. HF/Nitric should be colorless, whether or not silica is dissolved in it. I think HCl/Nitric is green, but I don’t work with the stuff. But in some ways the HCl/Nitric combo is nastier than the HF/Nitric combo. Pure nitric is a fairly average, run-of-the-mill acid, as is pure HCl. But mixing them creates a compound that is not only way more toxic, but also disolves many containers that would not be attacked by either acid alone.

This is why it is a good idea for labs that use both acids to have seperate waste acid streams for each.

3. Instead of trying to scare us with the prospect of sudden death, our lab manager makes us read reports of workers who have died from lingering, painful HF poisoning, after weeks of agony and multiple amputations.

And I thought I’d gotten into physics in order to avoid chemical nastiness like that. It turned out to be yet another sign that my career had taken a wrong turn.