Comments on: Nitroolefins – The Crying Game

By: Chemist

Chemist — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 20:58:29 +0000

Have quite some experience with nitroolefins.
You may have been lucky with your distillation. These compounds are very potent explosives. You did it under vaccum?

By: Fleaker

Fleaker — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:40:42 +0000

You know, I think it’s mixing the lachrymator with a solvent that makes it far worse than normal.

Want to know suffering? Wait til a grad student makes the mistake of putting a flask that they *thought* was rinsed free of benzyl chloride in the hot glassware dishwasher. Yarkes!

By: lots

lots — Mon, 28 May 2012 12:38:56 +0000

Ah! This post takes me back to my first year organic chemistry labs. The instructions warned us in bold that the product was a lachrymator, but I think (like opsomath’s first year student above) few of us knew what it meant. Crying ensued.

By: Anonymoose

Anonymoose — Mon, 28 May 2012 00:50:31 +0000

I got an accidental whiff of benzyl chloride outside of the hood, and that made my eyes sting for half an hour.

By: See Arr Oh

See Arr Oh — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:20:06 +0000

I need to reinstall my “Instant Rim-shot” button on this blog, permanently!

By: Free Radical

Free Radical — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:03:26 +0000

I’m giving my org chem final exam tomorrow. I fear it may be a lachrymator.

By: opsomath

opsomath — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:05:05 +0000

I was sitting at my in-lab desk in grad school, and kept having to wipe my eyes. Ow. Is something wrong with me? Do I need to go to the health center?

Then I heard our new first-year grad student’s little voice. “What’s ‘lachrymator’ mean?” She was reading the bottle, having just been dispensing some kind of alpha-bromo carbonyl thingy out on the bench with no ventilation. Her eyes were watering too.

I explained, with a certain amount of profanity and hustling to the fume hood with the bottle, what that little bit of vocab meant.

By: Toxic Carnival: Day Two | ScienceGeist

Toxic Carnival: Day Two | ScienceGeist — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:23:17 +0000

[...] today and is making the rest of us look bad for our lack of productivity! In the post, See Arr Oh discusses crying in lab. The tears in this case were due to 2-nitropropene. A quick minute outside of the hood in an [...]