For me, its toluene and DCM, which i do have, and begrudgingly store outside. but i would rather keep benzene in my house than toluene.
for reasons i do not quite understand, toluene has this slightly unique ability to slip out of any container it is sold in, and finding decent ones
one might store 5L of it in, is tricky. DCM does the same too but, like diethyl ether, it dissolves into most plastics and with the aid of the high
vapor pressure at room temp can squeeze its way out of even a PTFE tape sealed GL45, unless apparently, its a really good GL45 and/or has a teflon
liner too.
the reason i dont want to have them in my house is, i once purchased 5L of toluene from sydneysolvents, i had never bought toluene before in a large
volume, so i thought nothing of it. i used it once, to clean/dry/distill to put into a 500ml glass bottle for convenient use, i closed up the HDPE
bottle it came in and forgot about it in the corner of the room. at some point i grabbed an extra 1L which lowered the fluid level so i didnt notice
what happened next right away. 6 months later, my purified toluene had run out, i went to get some more, the toluene bottle was down to about 1.5L, i
had taken out 1.5L, meaning over 6 months, in my basement, 2L of toluene had evaporated and i didnt even notice. long term exposure to toluene like
that is really bad, even if its not detectable. the bottle wasnt puffed up, and didnt have any obvious signs of leakage, plus was in the same state it
came in, so i chalked it up to maybe there was some slight defect or something. nope. i buy another bottle from sydneysolvents, the one i currently
have now. its lost about 1L in the last 6 months stored outside. the DCM next to it, has lost less oddly enough, but some nontheless, however the DCM
swells up like a balloon so im not surprised.
I have heard mixed things about DCM, amateurs tell me its liquid cancer, but then an actual chemical engineer that works with it, says its relatively
benign compared to the standard selection of non-polar solvents we use, like hexane and toluene. Either way, its just so damn volatile it will
inevitably leak out of its container as well, and while maybe (i dont know how to interperet the toxicology studies properly) acute exposure is fine,
chronic i think is where it gets you, so any plastic lidded container will inevitably leak, and unless its stored in a ventilated solvent cupboard, or
a negative pressure room, it will find its way into you.
The timescale of effect from these is different, which is why they are so scary, they are relatively common but depending where its from, cheap bulk
technical grade stuff can possibly have a negative impact on your health stored in the house without you even knowing it.
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