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Comment by acidbaseextract | Hacker News Reader

Great site! I love the "What happens if you drink acetone?" article: https://dynomight.net/2020/09/14/what-happens-if-you-drink-a...

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I accidentally drank acetone once. It tasted like icy death. I learned after that hastily, worried i was going to die, you can consume up to a pop can's worth and not suffer ill effects as your body can actually break it down.

It's not a very pleasant experience though.

It's difficult to imagine how one could accidentally consume more than a swallow.

You think you are shotgunning a beer, but it's an acetone. Happens all the time.

Personal Note: Stop storing acetone in beer steins on the dining room table.

So my problem with acetone is how quickly it evaporates. I figured that cooling it down would slow the rate, so I kept my beer steins of acetone in the refrigerator.

Still didn't prevent accidental chugging. Any other suggestions?

I suppose you know what you are doing, but high risk of explosion/fire with the fumes, that is why the original container usually have a correct seal, the beer bottles don’t. Twice treacherous:

- For most gases, the stoechiometric proportion is very low (6-9% for methane — won’t ignite well above that) so it’s not like you have to keep a large quantity to be at risk,

- Artist houses and painting schools often burn because rags are kept in a corner and self-ignite.

Maybe not valid for you, maybe I’ve just heard horror stories ;)

The other classic "rags in a corner" ignition source is that drying oils, ie vegetable oils like you'd use for paint or wood finish, generate heat as they "dry" (actually polymerize).

In my case...it was a gatorade bottle full of acetone my coworker placed next to my gatorade bottle full of water...but yeah pretty much.

I guess the lesson is, gatorade bottles make for poor acetone storage.

I've had a family member take a swig of gasoline from an old beer bottle while working on a car.

The obvious fix here is not to store your molotov cocktails next to your regular cocktails.

Kind of like the etiquette for small arms when cleaning them at the dinner table.

Hmm might have worded that poorly. Was just a swallow, after in my readings i learned up to a soda can will not affect you too badly.

Would the experience be similar to a hangover? Or is my understanding biology that bad?

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