Mastodawn

Sam Levine 5d ago

When you go to get something out of the cabinet (which turned out not to be there anyway) and discover something else is A Problem.

This was the boron tribromide with the "use in three months of pack date" that I was shipped in July of last year. I haven't touched it since maybe late September, at which point it looked pretty normal. The bottle itself is inside this secondary container and I'm a little worried what it's going to look like when I open it...plastic cap maybe totally disintegrated?

#Chemistry #ChemiVerse

Fugue State Machine Moto 5d ago

@SRLevine I do hope you’re planning to post photos of whatever the BBr3 did to its container, just as soon as you’re in a safe position to do so

@cmdrmoto I'm not sure it's going to be photogenic? I might have to open it and plunge it into a thing of water.* Discovering it at 4:30PM made it a tomorrow morning problem because I'm less likely to screw up the quench when I'm not hungry.

*I haven't actually looked up the quench protocol yet.

Fugue State Machine Moto 5d ago

@SRLevine your chemical safety trumps all my looky-loo interest; reassured to know you’re the kind of person who takes full HALT conditions into consideration.

Iris Young (he/they/she) (PhD)5d ago

@cmdrmoto @SRLevine hungry, angry, loopy?, tired? what's L again?

Iris Young (he/they/she) (PhD)5d ago

@cmdrmoto @SRLevine for some chem I nominate Alone to be one of the HALT conditions.

Fugue State Machine Moto 3d ago

@iris @SRLevine lonely, as in: don’t do a thing which might incapacitate you unless there’s someone else around who can rescue your incapacitated ass

Iris Young (he/they/she) (PhD)3d ago

@cmdrmoto @SRLevine oh, now I feel very stupid for suggesting adding "alone".

Fugue State Machine Moto 3d ago

@iris @SRLevine you had the right idea; i see nothing stupid here

Sam Levine 3d ago

@iris @cmdrmoto Don't be down on yourself, I had to look up HALT to understand the comment at all.

Steve Gisselbrecht 3d ago

@cmdrmoto @iris @SRLevine

I was told not to use PMSF after everyone else had left for the day.

Sam Levine 3d ago

@stevegis_ssg @cmdrmoto @iris PMSF, really? biologists are so weird...

(they use HCl without PPE but get paranoid about something like PMSF?)

Steve Gisselbrecht 3d ago

@SRLevine @cmdrmoto @iris

It's not like I'm exactly afraid to die; it's just such a nasty way to go.

Sam Levine 3d ago

@stevegis_ssg @cmdrmoto @iris I literally ran serine hydrolase labeling and inhibition experiments for a good chunk of my post-doc work. It's not going to eat through my gloves and it isn't volatile, I'm not super worried about it.

MCDuncanLab 3d ago

@SRLevine @stevegis_ssg @cmdrmoto @iris

Wait what about PMSF?

I really wish chemicals came with a little comic book of here’s how this chemical can hurt you.

Like I know that’s what the little icons are supposed to be, but there’s like toxic if you guzzle it and toxic if you touch a grain and the signage isn’t much different.

Steve Gisselbrecht 3d ago

@MCDuncanLab @SRLevine @cmdrmoto @iris

It's not much more toxic than a lot of other things we use. It's just that, like, ethidium causes cancer, but if you die of PMSF poisoning you die because it inhibits acetylcholinesterase and every voluntary muscle in your body locks up. That gives me the ick in a big way.

MCDuncanLab 3d ago

@stevegis_ssg @SRLevine @cmdrmoto @iris

Yeah--except ethidium bromide does not cause cancer as far as I understand. It has to get to your liver to be metabolized to something that will be toxic and it never gets past your skin to your bloodstream.

Plus, they feed it to livestock FFS.

Sybr-'safe' is actually more toxic.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/myth-ethidium-bromide

Steve Gisselbrecht 3d ago

@MCDuncanLab @SRLevine @cmdrmoto @iris

Ooh, good to know!

Sam Levine 2d ago

@MCDuncanLab I thought the problem with ethidium bromide was that it was a teratogen (mutagen yes, but teratogens freak people out a lot more)

@stevegis_ssg @cmdrmoto @iris

MCDuncanLab 2d ago

@SRLevine @stevegis_ssg @cmdrmoto @iris

I don't see evidence of it being either a mutagen or teratogen--again they feed it to livestock.