Sciencemadness Discussion Board

The Curious Case of the Cursory Chemical Cache

Vinylogous - 19-10-2011 at 18:53

Hi Sciencemadness members! There is no dedicated introduction forum here, so I thought I would give a quick intro before delving into the heart of this post, a rather disheartening example of when hobby chemistry meets overzealous police officials.

I'm a synthetic chemist recently starting my first "real" job out of college at a pharmaceuticals company, and enjoying nearly every minute of it. Industry is so far Have an HPLC and Buchi rotovap all to myself, as well as access to a full analytical suite, two NMRs, LCMS, the works. It's lovely. I was a member of E&W back in its heyday, and I daresay that forum, along with Bill Nye, and a crazy/awesome high school chemistry teacher, vaulted me into my chemistry career. I also enjoy hobby tinkering with chemistry, electronics and mechanical stuff, though as you will see below, I fear that chemistry is becoming less and less of a socially acceptable hobby every day.

This article caught my eye in the local paper. It's truly sad that any time police or fire forces see glassware or anything labeled "chemicals," they go ballistic. Clearly, the only purpose for basement chemistry is making explosives, drugs, or both. Even when the items (acetone, xylene, sulfuric acid, and blowtorch butane), are found in every home improvement store on the planet, they stop at nothing to punish people for having such "dangerous chemicals."

http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Bethlehem-chemical-cache-case-resolved-2204542.php
Quote:
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story misstated the charge to which Jason Sanchez pleaded guilty. It is

attempted obstruction of governmental administration.

BETHLEHEM -- A former RPI graduate student who was arrested last November on charges that he kept a potentially volatile cache of chemicals in the basement of his apartment complex pleaded guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor count stemming from the case.

Jason Sanchez pleaded guilty to one count of attempted obstruction of governmental administration in Bethlehem Town Court. He will pay a $200 fine and serve no jail time.

Sanchez originally was charged with first-degree reckless endangerment, a felony, in addition to attempted obstruction of governmental administration and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors.

If found guilty on all three charges, Sanchez could have faced a maximum of nine years in prison. The attempted obstruction of governmental administration charge carried a maximum of one year in jail.

Police found acetone, xylene, sulfuric acid, a propane torch, butane fuel, laboratory-grade nitric acid and a device described by police as a "commercial-grade vacuum chamber" in the basement of the Cherry Arms apartment building Nov. 30.

Sanchez was a doctoral candidate in computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and teacher's assistant at Albany's William S. Hackett Middle School.

After his arrest, Sanchez said he was taking a semester off to save money for his lawyer fees.

RPI spokesman Mark Marchand said Sanchez is not currently enrolled at RPI.

Sanchez's younger brother, Keenan Sanchez, was badly burned in a Dec. 19, 2009, chemical fire that destroyed his home at 151 Adams Place in Delmar. Police said the younger Sanchez, then 15, may have been handling chemicals in the basement. Jason Sanchez and a third brother, Josh, were not home at the time.

Jason Sanchez could not be reached for comment Wednesday. The 25-year-old had maintained that he used the chemicals primarily to clean the vacuum chamber for science experiments and that the chemicals posed no danger.

Sanchez told the Times Union after his arrest that he purchased several of the chemicals at Lowes and kept no more than a gallon of each in the basement. He said he used acetone and xylene to clean the vacuum chamber and paint spills and that the sulfuric acid came in a quart of Rooto Pro Drain Opener.

Sanchez said he purchased the nitric acid online and used it to extract a microchip from its packaging.

The butane was used in an attempt to liquefy a metal gasket for the chamber and the propane torch was used when the butane didn't work, he explained.

Sanchez said he purchased the 500-pound vacuum chamber from Florida through eBay.

Police said the chemicals posed a "grave risk of death" and were potentially explosive if combined. Authorities searched the basement, prompted by a Cherry Arms resident who called after spotting the vacuum chamber.

"The police department did its job," Bethlehem police spokesman Lt. Tom Heffernan said Wednesday. "Once we turn the case over to the district attorney's office, there's nothing more we can do." The district attorney's office did not return phone calls for comment on the case Wednesday.

Reach Fitzgerald at 454-5414 or at bfitzgerald@timesunion.com.



He lives literally down the street from my best friend's house. Acetone, xylene, sulfuric acid, a propane torch, butane fuel, nitric acid and a vacuum chamber? Really, guys? The only thing you can't readily buy over the counter is the nitric acid (at least not in this area), which has completely legitimate uses for digital electronics work. Keeping things well labeled and limiting supply to less than a gallon of each, I daresay he's more prudent than many hobbyists I know. They talk about a blowtorch like it's a homebrew nuclear reactor, "What are you doing with all these STRANGE items and exotic chemicals in your basement in close proximity to each other? Hmm!?"
Quote:
Police said the chemicals posed a "grave risk of death" and were potentially explosive if combined.


So are nail polish remover, hydrogen peroxide, and HCl toilet bowl cleaner under every bathroom sink in the country.


It is unfortunate that a fire resulted in property damage, but that's no different than if the younger sibling was screwing around with matches, or oily rags in the garage going up. Now he's up to his eyeballs in legal debt, just to prove that he had totally legitimate hobby chemicals. It literally makes me sick to my stomach the degree of zeal and ignorance at play here.

I would end it with something sappy like, "Hopefully we can learn something from this," but I think all we can really glean is that having strange stuff in your basement is grounds for arrest in America.

hkparker - 19-10-2011 at 19:20

I think I have heard this exact sentence in another article...

"Police said the chemicals posed a "grave risk of death" and were potentially explosive if combined."

This is pretty ridiculous, I wonder what caused them to want to go looking in his home in the first place. I will be most likely moving out of the college dorm and into a house next year and am probably going to restart my home lab, but things like this make me reconsider...

Also, welcome to the forum :)!

Vinylogous - 19-10-2011 at 19:28

Someone or something caused a blaze.

Quote:
Sanchez's younger brother, Keenan Sanchez, was badly burned in a Dec. 19, 2009, chemical fire that destroyed his home at 151 Adams Place in Delmar.


I would say, "This is why you don't let your 15 year old brother play with chemicals," but I played with far more dangerous stuff when I was 15. But, case in point, I was an idiot back then, and nearly got kicked out of high school doing stupid stuff. :P

What creative and slightly offbeat people need is a place where they can learn how to do moderately dangerous stuff, safely, because they will find a way to do it otherwise, and they may well learn safety the hard way.

AndersHoveland - 19-10-2011 at 20:19

acetone, xylene, sulfuric acid, a propane torch, butane fuel, nitric acid


Anything "potentially dangerous" that people do not understand is feared. This is absurd and ridiculous. Countless things in life are potentially dangerous. That does not mean they should all be restricted.

It was well within the realm of acceptability for him to be storing a small container of flammable liquid or gas in his apartment. The concentrated acids may have been an issue if he was living on the second level, with people below him. But the overly suspicious police obviously overreacted to seeing the small collection of "chemicals".

People have burned their homes with stoves or electric heaters, yet neither of these are suspicious "dangerous" items.

There was a time where 12 year old boys were entrusted to use rifles. Those days are completely gone, it seems. The increasing taking away of personal responsibilities cannot be a good thing.

I would go so far as to say that the public not only has an irrational fear of chemicals, but of explosives also. In any case, chemicals in ones house certainly does not imply bombs or illegal drugs.

[Edited on 20-10-2011 by AndersHoveland]

hissingnoise - 20-10-2011 at 01:42

That case was reported here but thanks for the update!
I suppose we can only put it down to the times we live in . . .


fledarmus - 20-10-2011 at 05:09

Many of these compounds are classed as hazardous materials. There are rules about how much of each can be stored and what sorts of precautions are required. As long as he was working within the rules, he shouldn't have a problem, except for the publicity. Even the legal defense shouldn't have to go any further than explaining to the district attorney that no laws were broken. Case closed.

The problem - and this applies to any hobby you have or anything that you do in life, not just to chemistry - is that the area between explaining to the district attorney that no laws were broken and having him drop the case (cheap) and proving malicious prosecution (where the idiots trying to charge you with the crimes end up having to pay all the bills) is HUGE and VERY EXPENSIVE! Not many normal people can afford to go through that. Couple that with the fact that the laws are so voluminous, serpentine, and paralyzing (face it, when was the last time you drove 20 miles without breaking a single law?) that there is always some crime you are guilty of, and you end up with the result that anybody with enough sense can bankrupt anybody else over almost any activity they find objectionable. Police could confiscate essentially anything in your house on the grounds that it could possibly pose a hazard to somebody or other, was obtained as the result of illegal activity, or could be used as evidence of something totally different. After all, how many drug raids do you read about where the papers trumpet that the police recovered large amounts of cash, legal handguns, and pornography (all of which are perfectly legal), and somewhere in the fine print you find that either minimal or no drugs were actually discovered? And the way the police are avoiding liability now, all it takes is one person saying that they are concerned about one thing that they've seen, thought they saw, or heard about in your house for them to come in, bag up everything, and dump the whole mess into the district attorney's lap to sort out.

By the way, what was the outcome on the RPI case? A single count of "obstructing government administration" and a $200 fine? What was that for, telling the local EPA they couldn't come in and look at his house and making them get a court order?

Vinylogous - 21-10-2011 at 20:52

So, this hits actually way closer to home than I realized. I'm with my friend right now who has met the Sanchez family (brilliant folks, the whole lot of them) and we've both met his business, Andrew Zonenberg, who is possibly the most meticulous person I've ever met.

Apparently, the article conflates two separate incidents, the 'chemical' fire, and the nosy neighbor reporting the vacuum chamber, leading to the 'raid' (if it can be called that).

The fire was apparently caused by a gas leak explosion in the house and had nothing to do with what Keenan was working on. Keenan is extremely intelligent and wouldn't have done something so reckless. Volunteer firefighters responded to the scene and didn't have adequate training (my friend is saying over my shoulder, "they don't have training, period) and let the house burn to the ground.

And the neighbor reporting the vacuum chamber is just the sad but common case of someone seeing equipment they don't understand and getting scared.

Apparently the cops (either local, state, or fed, he isn't sure) have been monitoring the Sanchez's computer for a while and still giving them a hard time, unwilling to let it go and admit they were wrong. Keenan actually set up an encrypted channel to communicate with his brother. But I'm sure the harassment will continue for some time and they're looking for drug or explosives charges to pin on them.

Also, the paper says that Jason is a 'doctoral candidate in computer science,' but my friend informs me that it's in computational neuroanatomy. Leave it to journalists to butcher that.

Intergalactic_Captain - 22-10-2011 at 02:10

What people should truly fear with situations like this is that A; Once the cops get involved, they will find something to justify their case, and B; Even if a lawschool dropout could successfully defend the case, the cops are NOT going to back down and bring their actions into question...

Two hypotheticals that I'm sure everyone has thought about at some time...

1 - EVERYONE is violating some sort of local code or regulation or insurance clause... Take the guy living in a house with an attached garage. If he's any sort of handyman, he probably has a container of gas, some paint thinner, some paint, various aerosol cans, various solvents, a blowtorch, possibly some booze, and various other flamables in said garage... Most localities have codes regulating the quantities of flamable liquids one can store in such an area, and odds are they aren't in explosion-proof cabinets. At the same time, if a fire starts in said garage, regardless of the cause, some insurance prick could make a legally valid claim that he had it coming and as such they're not paying out.

2 - Said average joe also happens to have an allergy problem and has some claritin-D in his medicine cabinet. He's working on a refinishing project and his suburban neighbors smell some "chemical fumes"... They call the cops, who instantly thinking meth lab, go straight to the DA for a search warrant. The door is busted down, and after a short while they find solvents in the garage, drain cleaners under the sink, and pseudoephedrine containing products in the medicine cabinet. Not wanting to admit that they simply stumbled on the average american household, they shoehorn together a case that suggests this guy may be some kind of drug lord...

...Think about those for a couple minutes, and then try to understand why this guy is being raped - The simple fact that he had a vacuum chamber further complicates it, as he now had "chemicals" and "lab equipment" at the same time. He simply must be a criminal of some sort, as no normal citizen could have any possible use for those sorts of things...

quicksilver - 22-10-2011 at 08:51

This also opens a serious issue of the same ignorance and "chemophobia" in a journalist when reporting on a legal issue. There is a very strong possibility that the gentleman in question above was totally innocent of any wrong doing. However there also is a possibility that more evidence existed & was either not released or was over the head of the journalist.

From Country to Country (or even area to area within) there exists variances in the financial expenditure & "politics" involved in any investigation. Various nation-States had a substantially different attitude about many subjects prior to an event's public impact & substantial influence this has on re-elections, political appointees, and the use or loss of funds. It's basically useless to play "the blame game" but the facts are that most news outlets thrive on making money thus we see more sensationalism. The impact of major loss of life via terror in the past decades has also fed the public's acceptance of "better safe than sorry" when addressing certain issues. Coupling those elements together with ignorance regarding chemistry & the results are predicable.

This is a complex scenario. It is also a Pandora's Box in terms of Constitutional freedoms & public safety. Both the UK and USA have had legislation that has serious impact on a variety of Citizen's Rights. Broad impact legislation rarely has the desired effect when implemented in a reactionary stance toward a complex problem in society. However when complex problems also intermix with ignorance, the outcome is OFTEN wide ranging public fear & the miscarriage of justice.



EDIT:
This was one of the reasons why I really despised the TV series "Breaking Bad".



[Edited on 22-10-2011 by quicksilver]

DerAlte - 22-10-2011 at 13:27

Slightly OT but in the same vein:

The WHO is alleged to be considering a treaty to 'ban' Mercury

See http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44986303/ns/health/

I despair. The whole world had gone mad on me. Ban the UN.

Der Alte

Intergalactic_Captain - 23-10-2011 at 03:10

I really wouldn't worry about the mercury thing, despite the tangential implications in future policy. As an American, I can say that my government would wholly disregard such a treaty simply due to the whole light-bulb legislation nightmare we've dealt with. Except for the bible-thumpers, most of us realize that CFL's are a good idea...

Look what happened with the Kyoto Protocol - The rest of you had to deal with it for a decade or so, but we Americans simply said screw it... International treaties only work if the member nations actually adhere to them, which, in this case, we simply won't...

Vinylogous - 23-10-2011 at 15:19

Well, I don't know specifically what Sanchez was working on at his house, but I know Zonenburg has been working on hobby-scale etching of silicon chips to produce microstructures. A totally legal, legitimate hobby. He uses a rig with a power drill to spin-coat wafers that he orders, using commercial photoresist, then uses inkjet printouts overhead transparencies for the mask and develops with UV germicidal lamps. He uses RPI's filament evaporator to deposit metal coatings, and etches using over-the-counter HCl and 3% hydrogen peroxide. He also uses nitric acid in some of the etchings, as well as to remove the protective layer on CMOS chips so he can examine them using the stereomicroscope that some company bought him for a project.

Nowadays, any home activity that isn't watching football and Jersey Shore is looked at as weird and fringe. Truly sad.