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Comment by julian_t | Hacker News Reader

It is indeed scary. I once had to use a mixture of boiling nitric, hydrofluoric and perchloric acids... quite possibly the nastiest stuff I've ever come across, and partly responsible for my sideways move into programming.

The lab had a shower cubicle in the corner, with a tank on top and pull handle. The idea was that if you got any on you, taking an immediate shower in caustic soda was the best thing to do...

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One of the labs where I first had those (also chip fabs have them) attached to a high flow water supply - normally triggered by standing inside them.

Our top H&S guy decided that as he was responsible he should be the one to test it he did cheat a bit by wearing swimming goggles to protect his eyes. He commented it was like being sand blasted with small ball bearings and "fracking hurt"

A long time ago (late 70's) a lab I worked next to had an emergency shower over each worker and there were straps on their wrists. If they jerked their arm back the shower would go off.

When I was a school kid, a friend and I were into blowing stuff up and general chemical mayhem (those innocent pre-9/11 days!). We used to synthesize fuming nitric acid and mix it with oleum and potassium permanganate. The resulting fuming, purple mix would cause pretty much anything it came into contact with to immediately combust.

But that sounds - if you'll pardon the pun - like child's play compared to your boiling(!) nitric, HF and perchloric acid. I cannot image how you'd even contain such an evil substance? And what was it used for?

We mixed it fresh every day, and to contain it we used crucibles made from a platinum/gold alloy. Which, needless to say, were locked away very carefully at the end of the day.

And I was using it to dissolve up rock specimens for analysis: basaltic lavas that contained chromite and other notably insoluble minerals.

That stuff would dissolve anything...

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