How do you safely handle dry ice? I'm legitimately asking, I know retailers sell it with big warning labels but I wouldn't know how to transport it, move it, and similar.
First thing you do when you get your slab is that you wrap it in two towels, then you fold down the loose edges and pop that in a cooler. Towels towels towels, that's my go-to.
You can handle dry ice with your bare hands -- I have scores of times -- the trick is that contact with pressure (squeezing or weight) is what is going to give you frostbite. Otherwise, I have swiftly moved two pound chunks with bare hands if I were lazy. Any pair of winter or driving gloves is sufficient so long as the fingertips aren't open. Just leather gloves are dandy.
Now, if you're feeling fearful, you can drive with the windows down, but to be honest, carbon dioxide in too high of quantities will invoke a gasping/coughing reflex. You would have plenty of warning. You can verify this by putting a small chunk of dry ice in water, leaning over the cup, and inhaling. You'll cough, and that is the reflex to look far. It isn't shy about making itself known. I have driven around with fifty pounds of dry ice in coolers with no issues.
Now that you've driven home, you can take the dry ice, towels and all, and put one in the freezer, one or two in the fridge. Now, this stuff sublimates, so you won't have water everywhere, but don't worry about pressure building up in the two compartments, you'd have to use straps to hold the doors down tight enough to be an issue. I put the dry ice at the top of each compartment, as a trend.
It'll save your refrigerator's worth full of food.
The mechanisms that regulate your breathing use carbon dioxide levels as their only input. One side effect of this is that you'll happily suffocate to death, never realizing anything is wrong, breathing a gas that contains no oxygen -- as long as it also contains no carbon dioxide.
A happier side effect is that you will definitely detect, and feel very unhappy about, inappropriately high levels of carbon dioxide.
Yes, really. Indoors we can easily get as high co2 levels as 1000ppm (starting from 400 something which we have outside now). That has in various studies been connected to upwards of 30% in cognitive decline in some tests like decision making. Simpler tests are also affected, but not as much. Here's an article about a Harvard study: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-lev...
Dry ice in the car without the windows down seems like a bad idea.
Part of having the stuff wrapped up and insulated is that it isn't sublimating like mad.
I feel like carbonated fruit would be a treat, but I suspect I might be wrong?
A normal cooler works fine. Something that seals and could build pressure would be problematic.
Yes, unfortunately, the usual meaning of a concentration of CO2 is that there's an animal nearby exhaling it.
Seriously, dry ice sublimates so when you hold a block or pieces unless you actually grip the thing, the layer of sublimating CO2 protects your hand rather well. Use gloves or tools if you're going to move large amounts (e.g. dozens of blocks by hand, or pellets by the literal fistful) both to protect your hand and to avoid wasting your dry ice more than necessary.
But as far as "dangerous" things go, dry ice is really low on the scale.
The biggest danger is putting too much in a completely sealed and locked environment as the sublimation will cause significant expansion, increase in pressure, and therefore a possible explosion.
Heavy leather work gloves have worked well for me the few times I've needed to load some dry ice into a freezer due to a power cut.
Don't be particularly afraid. It's not hard to handle.
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