Jor and Anders:
Ok. Keep relativating the dangers of solutions of HF and gaseous HF, probably from the perspective of someone who’s never had to work with the damn
things!
Now everything is relative of course but with HF not that much. There’s a story even here on SM of a very experienced experimenter
who got serious HF burns from a small amount of inadvertently produced HF (an unexpected hydrolysis), in a professional setting. I think I can find it
back if you’re interested.
Wiki linked to a story (no longer available unfortunately) of an American refuse collector who dies from exposure to the gas. How? Some idiot had put
an EMPTY plastic bottle of HF solution with the common refuse, and when loaded into the truck, unbeknownst to our poor victim the
bottle was crushed and he got spritzed with the ‘content’ of the bottle. He died hours later in hospital, in an agonisingly painful death. Because
that’s the other thing: HF burns are very painful, don’t reveal themselves immediately and cause almost irreversible scar tissue.
Sure it’s possible to work safely with HF solutions, soluble fluorides and even anhydrous HF but it takes very strong precautions and clear
thinking. Someone I know who works with it on a daily basis professionally refuses to do so w/o full breathing apparatus.
Comparing the toxicity of HF with Cl2 or Br2 is also nonsense. I’ve inadvertently choked on Cl2 several times, having to leave my lab waiting for
the concentration to fall. With HF I wouldn’t have lived to tell the tale. Guess what the result would have been with F2…
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I see people distilling 10's of
mLs of Br2 and I never see people call them insane...
