Monoamine
Hazard to Others
Posts: 166
Registered: 25-5-2021
Location: Sweden(ish)
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Mood: +7
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Why is it so hard to find benzene?
I genuinely don't understand this.
Sure there are reagents that are harder to get than others. For instance, it took me quite some time to find things like thionyl chloride or some
specialized organic solvents, or semi-controlled chemicals like methylamine.
The fact that benzene is so hard to find is even stranger since toluene is super easy to get, and you can even just buy it at the hardware store.
But for simple benzene it just seems completely impossible. The only place I've seen it sold is by Sigma Aldrich - no where else.
So why is this? Is benzene internationally banned or something?
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BromicAcid
International Hazard
Posts: 3241
Registered: 13-7-2003
Location: Wisconsin
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Mood: Rock n' Roll
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Benzene is a known carcinogen, pretty much every place has phased it out due to safety concerns. It seems like most everything we work with is a
possible/probable carcinogen but most chemicals are not known carcinogens.
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EF2000
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Registered: 10-5-2023
Location: The Steppes
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Mood: Taste testing the Tonka fuel
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Not completely banned, but phased out wherever possible and included in all regulations like REACH.
Toluene is less carcinogenic, so it's more available.
[Edited on 7-7-2024 by EF2000]
Wroom wroom
"The practice of pouring yourself alcohol from a rocket fuel tank is to be strongly condemned encouraged"
-R-1 User's Guide
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BromicAcid
International Hazard
Posts: 3241
Registered: 13-7-2003
Location: Wisconsin
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Mood: Rock n' Roll
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Companies can still do it but they need safety systems in place such as monitoring programs. If an employee down the road comes up with leukemia you
have issues since they can more readily trace that back to the benzene they handled while in your employ.
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Texium
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Posts: 4566
Registered: 11-1-2014
Location: Salt Lake City
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Mood: PhD candidate!
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Fortunately it’s quite easy and cheap (and fun) to produce benzene from readily available sodium benzoate.
Edit: Also, I still use benzene regularly in my research because I run a lot of radical bromination reactions, and it’s a good solvent for that
since it’s inert to free radicals. Carbon tetrachloride would be even better, but it is far more expensive and even harder to obtain.
[Edited on 7-7-2024 by Texium]
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BromicAcid
International Hazard
Posts: 3241
Registered: 13-7-2003
Location: Wisconsin
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Mood: Rock n' Roll
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@Texium - I have a reaction I run where benzene is the by-product so we have run in benzene before since we have to do the same paperwork.
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