Warning to welders / brake cleaner users...

[Shuriken]

http://www.brewracingframes.com/id75.htm

[CatatonicBug]

Scary stuff!! Who'da thunk it? A tiny whiff of smoke, and your life goes down the tubes...

[Axel]

warning

Thanks for this

[TDodge7]

damn good to know . thanks .

[Ivan]

It reacts with Argon? One of the Noble Gasses?

That's pure BS. They use argon since it is one of the least reactive substances known to man. The chemical formula for phosgene is COCl2, which has absolutely no argon in it, only carbon oxygen and chlorine. Hydrogen chloride (hyrdocloric acid) is HCl and only has hydrogen and chlorine.

That was 8th grade chemistry

[fredintoon]

Who said "reacted"?

It reacts with Argon? One of the Noble Gasses?
That's pure BS. They use argon since it is one of the least reactive substances known to man. The chemical formula for phosgene is COCl2, which has absolutely no argon in it, only carbon oxygen and chlorine. Hydrogen chloride (hyrdocloric acid) is HCl and only has hydrogen and chlorine.
That was 8th grade chemistry

Hi Ivan,
not "reacted with" but "in the presence of". Perhaps, like the equally inert Platinum in your car's catastrophic perverter, the Argon gas acts as a catalyst to generate the phosgene?
Anyway, back a half-century ago, when I was an apprentice and everybody smoked because it wasn't bad for you then, we had degreasing tanks that ran on trichloroethylene vapour. The hot vapour sat in the open tank like a cloud and there were chilled water condensing coils around the top of the tank to recondense the vapour so it couldn't get out. Lower a greasy dirty part in there, wait 5 minutes and lift out a clean one.
Above the tank in big red letters the sign said NO SMOKING WITHIN 30 FEET
When asked "Why, that sh1t won't even burn?" we were told "No, but if you inhale it through a lit cigarette it'll kill you."

[LoserShoes]

This is no joke! Phosgene was one of the poison gases used in WW1. Some fire extinguishers used to be filled with carbon tetrachloride. They were banned cause if you sprayed them on a hot surface like a stove, phosgene would be formed. Quite a few people were hurt and killed by these.

Steve

[stevo66]

phosgene gas

Thanks for this... I had forgotten about phosgene gas !!! I use brake cleaner all the time..But didnt realize what it would do with an argon Mig My great grandfather paid the price in france in WW1 (he survived the war but the lung damage eventually killed him...)

[Ivan]

The original article stated that argon from the mig/tig welder made phosgene gas. That is simply not true. Also, carbon tet is banned from use in common substances. Carb cleaner and brake cleaner used to use it, but somewhere in the late 90s, they stopped using it and stuff really started sucking. Carb cleaner used to dissolve all kinds of stuff (like skin and corneas) but now it hardly dries out my skin, let alone cleans carbs worth a damn.

Back to the argon. It was suggested that it might be a catalyst. For all my research and knowledge, catalysts are almost always a compound of a precious metal. I know there are others out there, but they are extremely rare. The only catalytic reactions I could come up with that even remotely used argon in the process, only used it in the same matter as a welder, to prevent oxidization. The number of compounds that actually contain argon in the molecular structure number only in the hundreds. Compared to sodium, which has compounds in the millions or carbon, which is in the trillions, you begin to see the impossibility of argon causing any reaction.

If you are really worried about that kind of stuff, don't buy anymore bleach and ammonia.

[Crazcnuk]

Ok, so the argon provides an O2 free environment for the process to take effect.


Don't worry about Ivan, he's bored to the point of defending even gov't/business conspiracies!

[oseaghdha]

Ok, so the argon provides an O2 free environment for the process to take effect.


...................

That was my thought.

[b.walker5]

Nothing new...

Anyone working in the refrigeration/airconditioning industry knows this already. Heating/Burning any chlorine based chemical produces phosgene. It's common for fridgies to get a whiff from time to time when brazing pipework around evaporators, compressors, TXV's etc. I've had many over the years and while it's pretty unpleasant, with burning nostrils and eyes, and some laboured breathing, I've never experienced any of the other symptoms referred to in the article. It can be pretty nasty in confined spaces but it's hard to imagine that a couple of drops of brake cleaner would produce enough posgene to do that unless there were underlying health conditions to begin with. The argon connection may exclude enough 02 to concentrate the production but personally I doubt it, I doubt that tetrachloroethylene would have enough chlorine in it to begin with.