Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Wonders Of Sodium Carbonate or How to kill an orangutan

Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.

No it isn't, and I'm not aware of a single person that has died from acidental borax consumption. Sorry dude, but you deserve a public shaming for spreading false information. Alright, now get into the stocks...

NedsHead - 5-3-2017 at 04:12

Borax
Acute toxicity
Ingestion:
Low acute oral toxicity; LD
50
in rats is 4,500 to 5,000
mg/kg of body weight.

The "many people who have died from it" must have really been committed

Plutonium404 - 5-3-2017 at 04:42

Borax
Acute toxicity
Ingestion:
Low acute oral toxicity; LD
50
in rats is 4,500 to 5,000
mg/kg of body weight.

The "many people who have died from it" must have really been committed

Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.

This was a pretty big case in China just two years ago. A family of five was making stuffed steam buns and accidently use borax instead of baking soda to make the dough rise. 3 of the 5 people died, 1 was in serious condition, and the other made it out OK after having their stomach pumped.

After this incident, the toxicity of borax and boric acid related compounds was retested, and it was found 1-3 grams causes severe toxic effects in adults, less than 15 grams can cause death, and the lethal dose for infants to be about 1.5 grams.

Here are the sources in case you still don't believe me (both are in Chinese, but a good browser translator should allow you to get the gist):
http://news.sohu.com/20150222/n409118861.shtml

http://qingdao.iqilu.com/jiankang/jkzx/2015/0225/2316213.shtml

Melgar - 5-3-2017 at 05:10

Borax
Acute toxicity
Ingestion:
Low acute oral toxicity; LD
50
in rats is 4,500 to 5,000
mg/kg of body weight.

The "many people who have died from it" must have really been committed

Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.

Ok, first of all, you're using the phrase "borax and boric acid related compounds". We're talking about borax and only borax, so none of this"related compounds" BS. Boric acid is something else entirely, and is often used to kill cockroaches in households, particularly because the way it kills them (by drying out their exoskeletons) is not harmful to people. However, because this is China we're talking about, that "boric acid" might have been replaced with cadmium cyanide or God knows what, because it was a nickel per ton cheaper than real boric acid. As far as real borax, this article explains it better than whatever weird ramblings are coming from the Chinese media:

https://crunchybetty.com/getting-to-the-bottom-of-borax-is-i...

Can you find a single corroborating article that wasn't written in China? I thought not. Now back to the pillories!

Plutonium404 - 5-3-2017 at 05:17

Borax
Acute toxicity
Ingestion:
Low acute oral toxicity; LD
50
in rats is 4,500 to 5,000
mg/kg of body weight.

The "many people who have died from it" must have really been committed

Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.

It's ironic that you are criticizing my sources when the source you provide is titled "Crunchybetty" and uses statements such as "Borax is wholly natural." Cinnabar is totally natural too, so should I go eat some now? Potassium chromate is also found in nature as the mineral tarapacaite, so that means it's perfectly safe right?

Geocachmaster - 5-3-2017 at 05:42

Plutonium404 my whole post just got deleted so I'll make it short this time.

Neither of your sources support your statement the 15g can cause death.
I'll make some assumptions to see if the story given seems accurate:
<15g can cause death, so I'll assume that the three people that died ingested 10g each.
The two other people had signs of toxicity, so we'll say they each had one gram.
That's 32g total of borax in the bread of the steamed buns they ate.
I can't find the density of powdered borax, but it must be something less than the solid, which is 1.73g/cc. That means they added more than 18.5cc (probably way more, the density of powdered borax I bet is around 1g/cc) of what they thought was baking soda to the recipe. That's a huge amount! I have a recipe for 60 cookies which uses 1 teaspoon, 4.9ml or so, about 4.5g. I can't find a recipe for steamed buns that uses baking soda, but it would not take that much.

Bottom line, unless there is a good souce to support your claims, especially if they go against common knowledge, no one will believe them.

unionised - 5-3-2017 at 05:55

The way to make boric acid is to treat borax with an acid such as hydrochloric acid.
If you ingest borax that's exactly what happens- you mix the borax with the acid in your stomach.

So, do you now see that you are talking total bullshit there?

You are also wrong about the mechanism by which borates (whether initially supplied as boric acid or a salt, like borax).
The classic recipes for killing ants etc involve mixing the borate with sugar. That's so the bugs eat it.
Unless you think they decide that the clever thing to do with their food it is to rub it all over themselves, your idea that it dries them out is nonsense.
It's also not plausible- why would boric acid dry them out more than, say, a warm day?
The exoskeleton of insects is pretty nearly dry chitin to begin with.

Borates- in solution in water- are toxic to invertebrates, so it's not "drying them out"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01055917?LI=tr...

Meanwhile, back in the real world, borax is quite toxic.

[Edited on 5-3-17 by unionised]

Metacelsus - 5-3-2017 at 06:22

Some studies on borate toxicity to humans:

1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10050929

Quote:

The critical effects in several species are male reproductive toxicity and developmental toxicity. The doses that cause these effects are far higher than any levels to which the human population could be exposed. Humans would need to consume daily some 3.3 g of boric acid (or 5.0 g borax) to ingest the same dose level as the lowest animal NOAEL. No effects on fertility were seen in a population of workers exposed to borates or to a population exposed to high environmental borate levels. There is remarkable similarity in the toxicological effects of boric acid and borax across different species. Other inorganic borates that simply dissociate to boric acid are expected to display similar toxicity, whereas those that do not dissociate simply to boric acid may display a different toxicological profile.

2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21424392

Quote:

dose levels of boron associated with developmental and reproductive toxic effects in animals are by far not reachable for humans under conditions of normal handling and use

3) The EPA's toxicology report:

Quote:

In summary, reviews of Poison Control Center data support a finding that routine, inadvertent exposures among infants and small children to boric acid seldom pose a significant risk. However, ingestions of substantial amounts pose serious risks. Among adults,there have been incidents with significant toxicity from breathing dusts that were airborne. These incidents are usually due to over-application by inexperienced applicators.

[Edited on 3-5-2017 by Metacelsus]

Attachment: EPA-HQ-OPP-2005-0062-0004.pdf (516kB)
This file has been downloaded 875 times

violet sin - 5-3-2017 at 08:02

Sooo, my niece and my son are 100% fine just for the record, now 4 and 3 respectively. Both intelligent and quite physically capable. If anything ahead of their piers.

The stuff was throw in, in pinch by hand quantities to hot tap water and set off to the side for a few. The containers were then rinsed several times with just water after all the greasy feeling and smell were gone.

Simple, effective, safe. And no SLS, artificial smells, sudds making residue. Also if you used regular detergent you could taste and smell it from the soft plastic. The children rejected those.

Though i can't speak for larger quantities, there is zero harm in using it as such.

Sigmatropic - 5-3-2017 at 10:50

My favorite grandparents chemical has got to be citric acid. It chelates certain metal ions and I've successfully applied it to clean coffee machines, tea pots, cups, ect. and derust some corroded iron parts.

JJay - 5-3-2017 at 11:12

My dad used to give us bottles of anhydrous biotech ethanol to wash our faces with on camping trips. That stuff burns; the idea of drinking it never even crossed my mind.

AJKOER - 5-3-2017 at 15:32

Caution with Na2CO3, a boiling aqueous solution of Washing Soda behaves like NaOH, and readily attacks Aluminum utensils causing pitting!

I have verified this with Al foil and boiling Na2CO3 heated in a microwave.

The action of water on Na2CO3, I could express by the reversible reactions:

Na2CO3 + H2O = NaOH + NaHCO3

NaHCO3 + H2O = NaOH + H2O + CO2

and with heating, the escape of CO2 moves the reaction to the right. This is confirmed by a reference to quote:

"In aqueous solution, carbon dioxide production begins at room temperature and decomposition of NaHCO3(aq) is essentially complete if the solution is brought to boiling."

Link: http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/inorganic/faq/c...

Contributing would be the introduction of Al, which reacts/removes NaOH, also moving the reaction to the right.

Interestingly, in a cold solution, there is no evidence of any reaction.

[Edited on 6-3-2017 by AJKOER]

Melgar - 5-3-2017 at 18:08

Quote: Originally posted by unionised

His statement was so incredibly wrong that I didn't know where to start, in proving it wrong. Chemicals can be inhaled and absorbed through the skin as well as swallowed. Inhalation exposure is usually the worst for you, health-wise, in which case, the two chemicals ARE very different. So do you see why you're completely full of shit yourself? If I can prove a chemical is harmless when inhaled, not only does that prove it has no or low toxicity when swallowed, but it provents a pivot to "well, I meant it was toxic when inhaled." Really, my goal was to point out the pivot from "borax" to "borax and boric-acid-related chemicals".

Quote:

You are also wrong about the mechanism by which borates (whether initially supplied as boric acid or a salt, like borax).
The classic recipes for killing ants etc involve mixing the borate with sugar. That's so the bugs eat it.
Unless you think they decide that the clever thing to do with their food it is to rub it all over themselves, your idea that it dries them out is nonsense.
It's also not plausible- why would boric acid dry them out more than, say, a warm day?
The exoskeleton of insects is pretty nearly dry chitin to begin with.

Borates- in solution in water- are toxic to invertebrates, so it's not "drying them out"
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01055917?LI=tr...

Meanwhile, back in the real world, borax is quite toxic.

[Edited on 5-3-17 by unionised]

Haha, wow, you just have no clue how wrong you are, do you? See, insects groom themselves with saliva from their mouths, and they have this waxy stuff all over their shells that prevents water loss. Turns out, boric acid in that saliva makes the waxy stuff stop doing its job, and the insect dies of dehydration. The boric acid doesn't have to be in the saliva, but it helps. Boric acid also has other toxic effects, but the thing with the waxy layer is the main one, since they don't have to eat it for it to kill them:

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/assets/media/documents/infos...

I like how you think that any silly thought that enters your head is "the real world." Well, in the REAL real world, borax and boric acid are both about as toxic to humans as good ol' sodium chloride, and boron is a necessary trace mineral. Some people come to the ER on occasion, freaking out after either they or their kid swallowed some boric-acid-based cockroach killer. They often have symptoms, which are almost certainly due to the placebo effect, since a study comparing reported effects of exposure to different pesticides showed that boric acid had the fewest. Or borax. Either way, you've been convicted of attempting to spread false information, so to the pillories with you!

If you were merely confused about the meaning of "acute toxicity", you may attempt an appeal based on ignorance.

Chemetix - 6-3-2017 at 00:32

Ooorh c'mon!
Everyone knows borax is deadly when inhaled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQ1yJqwY_4

j_sum1 - 6-3-2017 at 01:37

Quote: Originally posted by Chemetix

Ooorh c'mon!
Everyone knows borax is deadly when inhaled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQ1yJqwY_4

That's not the regular Muppets I am used to!

Melgar - 6-3-2017 at 04:44

I used that source because it cited its sources as was written with a style that was easy to understand. And who gives a crap if the article says it's wholly natural? It never says that you should eat everything that's wholly natural, and the only implication seems to be that if that's something that people care about, then borax is in that category.

As far as your Chinese sources go: In China, people have a tendency to not trust what the government says, because the government has lied to them before in the interests of not starting a panic. Two kinds of rumors get started in China: total bullshit rumors, and true rumors that typically implicate the government. The government only cares about quashing one of those types of rumors though, so the other type has a tendency to spread rather quickly, using China's limited non-governmental media. Allowing bullshit rumors to spread via nongovernmental media also gives governmental media more credibility by comparison, so the government isn't as thorough about eliminating those stories. How much do you want to bet which type of media those two websites contain? Because my money's on nongovernmental.

Sulaiman - 6-3-2017 at 05:32

I can verify that a small quantity of boric acid sprinkled on the routes that insects take will stop a silverfish infestation within a week.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverfish
I used about 1g TOTAL, leaving 249g for experiments

I rubbed a little between my fingers
... nothing to report other than the spiky nature of the crystals.

P.S. if you want to save the orangutan use palm oil from sustainable sources,
when I was in Malaysia a lot of old rubber plantations were converted to oil palm,
hence no new destruction, but at slightly higher cost,
that Western consumers were not willing to pay.
Result (combined with greed & corruption) = lots more virgin forrest lost

Don't blame the ivory poachers ... stop buying ivory ... etc.

[Edited on 6-3-2017 by Sulaiman]

RogueRose - 6-3-2017 at 05:33

Sodium Drift 2017 - and the drift goes on....

RogueRose - 7-3-2017 at 02:45

I've noticed a LOT of uses for Na2CO3, one as the base of my laundry soap and the rest being coconut oil based soap (lye soap) and or fels-naptha - both shaved to very fine flakes so it dissolves quickly in water. The mix of these two has worked better than any detergent I have used in the last 10 years and it is about 1/10 to 1/15 the price!

I did try making soap with Na2CO3 instead of NaOH using the correct stoichmetric amounts and maybe about 3-4% more carbonate to make sure it was enough. It seemed to never go through the saponification process and solidify or heat much though it did heat slightly. I did use anhydrous carbonate for this as well, IDK if that may be an issue but figured that would be fine.

One good thing if you need Na2CO3 is that you can always make it with baking soda by heating (some say to 250, but I found this often leaves a lot unconverted so I go to about 500). If you need pure sodium carbonate for that is at least food grade (most baking soda is USP so it is even more pure than food grade) then converting from NaHCO3 is probably the best bet.

I just did a conversion on the stove top using a high quality SS skillet that had been scrubbed clean to perfection before the process. Towards the end of the process I stated noticing some yellowish "residue" being scrapped up off the bottom - it looked like dried yellow snow but there was a very minimal amount. I scraped the carbonate away so there was a VERY thin layer left and could see that there was a very thin coating of a yellow substance which I'm not sure what it is - just Na2CO3 or if is some corrosion of the stainless steel. I took some pics to show what I saw.

I'm concerned if the pan is contaminating the carbonate and maybe the heat and basic/caustic nature of the carbonate may be corroding the pan. IDK if this is a possibility or if it is from high heat causing it to yellow. I do seem to recall that once when heating Na2CO3 to a very high temp it did go off-white to a slight yellow tint - BUT when I heated bicarb in a glass test tube with a blowtorch to VERY high temp (probably 1000-1200F) I didn't notice the yellow at all.

NaHCO3 to Na2CO3 - yellow residue small - 1.jpg - 34kB

NaHCO3 to Na2CO3 - yellow residue small - 2.jpg - 40kB

NaHCO3 to Na2CO3 - yellow residue small - 3.jpg - 54kB

Melgar - 7-3-2017 at 05:07

I've found that heating a bicarbonate solution to near water's boiling point will evolve CO2 quite readily, and if you need an aqueous solution anyway, this is more convenient than heating the dry powder.

nice one !

Sulaiman - 7-3-2017 at 06:00

If only I could remember all these useful tips,
someone (else, not me, I'm lazy) should index all of these gems.

RogueRose - 7-3-2017 at 06:01

I've found that heating a bicarbonate solution to near water's boiling point will evolve CO2 quite readily, and if you need an aqueous solution anyway, this is more convenient than heating the dry powder.

That's good to know! I'll have to try that and see what happens. I once baked at 450F for like 5 hours (in winter so didn't matter) and when I pulled it out it still looked and "flowed"/packed just like normal bicarb so I didn't think anything happened.

If you heat it to 212-250 and stir with a spoon the powder looks like a liquid and emits bubbles of gas and I guess steam maybe. I just took some video of this and it is pretty neat.

Ursa - 7-3-2017 at 08:52

Borax
Acute toxicity
Ingestion:
Low acute oral toxicity; LD
50
in rats is 4,500 to 5,000
mg/kg of body weight.

The "many people who have died from it" must have really been committed

Be careful and make sure you wash out the borax really well. Borax is really really toxic by ingestion and many people have died from it.

Whoops I accidentaly mixed up my borax with my baking soda. Seriously though, residually, I don't think 1.5 grams would be left in a baby bottle.

Ursa - 7-3-2017 at 09:02

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose

You mind posting this video? Sounds pretty interesting.

RogueRose - 7-3-2017 at 11:50

Quote: Originally posted by Ursa

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose

https://www.nexusmagazine.com/component/search/?searchword=b...

http://www.health-science-spirit.com/borax.htm

https://www.earthclinic.com/remedies/borax3.html

You mind posting this video? Sounds pretty interesting.

Yeah when I get it edited. It's 2.5Gb - somehow it recorded in super high def or something b/c it was like 5 mins buy my cell phone made it a huge file.

I re-recorded at lower definition so here is a short clip of what it looks like when it is hot (probably 250-300F) on a cast iron pan (best material I've found, DON'T user stainless steel)

Bicarb turning into sodium carbonate - bubbly - water like texture

Video 2 - Better quality - higher resolution - different video though..
[Edited on 7-3-2017 by RogueRose]

[Edited on 7-3-2017 by RogueRose]

pneumatician - 18-3-2017 at 10:09

oh no!!! more human mental excrements!!!

unionised - 18-3-2017 at 10:24

I take it you didn't actually read the article you cited.
Here's what it says
"As an insecticide, boric acid acts as a “stomach poison”
for ants, cockroaches, silverfish and termites, and is most
commonly used in a bait formulation containing a feeding attractant or as a dry powder. The powder can be injected
into cracks and crevices, where it forms a fine layer of dust.
Insects travel through the powder, which adheres to their
legs. When the insects groom themselves, they ingest the
poison, which causes death due to starvation and dehydration
3-10 days later. "

The poison's path is from their skins to their guts- not the other way round.

There's also the galloping insanity of comparing the toxicity of borates to table salt.
Yep, they are roughly equally toxic (on an acute w/w basis)
However, you need to have salt in your house, but you don't need to have borax there.
It's a risk/benefit thing.

Texium - 18-3-2017 at 12:26

Gotta love how this argument about borax rages on and yet nobody has recognized Metacelsus's post which is by far the most well-presented and authoritative evidence in the thread.

JJay - 18-3-2017 at 12:33

Quote: Originally posted by zts16

Gotta love how this argument about borax rages on and yet nobody has recognized Metacelsus's post which is by far the most well-presented and authoritative evidence in the thread.

Metacelsus makes some great posts.

Melgar - 26-3-2017 at 15:35

Quote: Originally posted by RogueRose

Yep. 2 NaHCO3 + heat = 1 Na2CO3 + CO2 + H2O

The aqueous reaction starts at maybe 50C, since liquid-phase reactions have lower activation energy, and gets faster the higher you go above that. You can tell it's working though, because of the bubbles, because the solubility increases, and because the crystals look different when they fall out of solution after it cools down again.

Quote: Originally posted by zts16

Gotta love how this argument about borax rages on and yet nobody has recognized Metacelsus's post which is by far the most well-presented and authoritative evidence in the thread.

I did, and probably should have thanked him for posting all those references that reinforced what I'd been saying, but I was trying not to spend too much time off-topic. In that instance, the thing to do would seem to be to correct the misinformation, then get back on topic, no?

clearly_not_atara - 26-3-2017 at 23:49

You can make sodium hydroxide from Na2CO3 and lime (CaO*nH2O). A bit of a silly reaction if you can buy NaOH, but lime is somewhat more common than NaOH, since it is used to raise soil pH among other things. Lime is also subject to fewer regulations and cheaper in bulk.

[Edited on 27-3-2017 by clearly_not_atara]

Melgar - 27-3-2017 at 00:56

Quote: Originally posted by clearly_not_atara

You can make sodium hydroxide from Na2CO3 and lime (CaO*nH2O). A bit of a silly reaction if you can buy NaOH, but lime is somewhat more common than NaOH, since it is used to raise soil pH among other things. Lime is also subject to fewer regulations and cheaper in bulk.

[Edited on 27-3-2017 by clearly_not_atara]

Typically "lime" refers to CaCO3, "hydrated lime" refers to Ca(OH)2, and "quicklime" refers to "CaO". Calcium hydroxide isn't just a hydrate of CaO though, it's quite different chemically, and has to be heated to 500C+ to drive off the water, indicating that there's a chemical change taking place, not just a transition from a hydrated to anhydrous form. Of course we still have this language that implies otherwise, like when we refer to sugar and starch as "carbohydrates" implying they're hydrates of carbon. Because they were named back when all we knew about them was that heating them would result in water and carbon forming.

In this case, either quicklime or hydrated lime would work, I'm guessing, because it would be an aqueous solution, and CaO would turn into Ca(OH)2 as soon as it reacted with water.

[Edited on 3/27/17 by Melgar]

Herr Haber - 27-3-2017 at 03:29