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Author: Subject: Purification of phosphorus -- treatment of WP burns
gutter_ca
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[*] posted on 1-8-2012 at 15:53


http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/17/phosphorous-may-h...

Supposedly happened here in San Diego.




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[*] posted on 1-8-2012 at 16:51


Quote: Originally posted by Rogeryermaw  
firstly let me say that if you are in fear for your health don't let anyone tell you not to seek medical care. that said, the resource of first hand knowledge available here about phosphorus burns is rather low (personally i feel that is a good thing) so the experience base to draw on is limited. my experiences with phosphorus burns are minor but the wounds were deep and very painful. i tried making PCl3 on a test tube scale and there was a point where my chlorine generator pushed too much gas and the result was liquified P4 sloshing out of the tube. the resulting fire melted the test tube and glass tubing from the gas generator. when it dropped, it got on my hand and my pants. instinctively i patted the fire but that only spread it so i dropped my pants, rolled them into a ball to extinguish the fire and wrapped a wet towel around my hand. i did not have a method of neutralization handy so i had to get the area cold and peel the phosphorus off the wound. this was around a year ago and i have suffered no ill effect to this day. my wife (nurse) says your wound looks healthy and said she would treat it as a normal wound. use a good triple antibiotic, and loose gauze so it can breathe. re-dress the area every day or two. after 3-4 days let it breath so it can crust over an heal. otherwise, just keep it clean. you have done a great job of caring for it thus far. the use of a good triple antibiotic will help to minimize the appearance of scar tissue.

again let me re-stress that if you are in fear for your health, do not let anyone tell you not to seek medical attention. i can only relate my own experiences with this beast which do not cover all bases in any way. speedy recovery, man.

as far as the welding excuse, due to the size and area of the burn, it may be wise to say you accidentally laid the area down on a hot surface after welding.


Good grief, you peeled WP from your wound? :(
Then you were in a much greater danger than I ever was. I haven't found any on my burned tissue. It either burned off (I don't recall much pain, maybe because of the adrenaline), or fell on the floor.
I have found a tiny glowing speck few cm away from the wound, resting on the hairs. I could barely see it, like when you look sideways, searching for a faint star. And that's it.
I'm grateful for your wife's input. Yes, the gauze is loosen, it's like 6-7 layers, it's not encased with surgical tape, there's plenty of room beneath it. I don't think letting it breathe without the dressing is appropriate at this time because it's quite deep. I'll continue this until day five, at least.
I have triple antibiotic in a powder form, but I don't see the neccessity as I'm using Ag-sulfadiazine.

If things get worse, I'm heading to ER. No worries about that.


Quote: Originally posted by Pyro  
endiminion, you should say you had an accident using a flare, flares often contain WP, chances are they will not ask too many questions. say you used a road flare, or that you were on a boat,...
The flares I have on the boat contain WP, and at one point the company recalled them as they were not safe for use, something about them exploding.
I knew english wasn't your first language, by what I can make out on your P container, it says Fosfor, which means you can live in either:Belgium, Holland, germany, and a few others.
which one is it?
EDIT:if you are going to say its a welding accident i personally think that you should say that flux dripped onto your hand, even though if you are welding you should be wearing welding gloves lol.
Just go to ER, even if you tell them you got it purifying WP, what can they do? chances are WP is not illegal, and the cops will have a heck of a time getting a warrant

[Edited on 1-8-2012 by Pyro]


That's some nasty flare you've got there. I've seen and used regular ones only.
It's Croatia.
Illegal or not, I don't want to have anything with those creeps. The amount of corruption here is staggering. They'd enjoy crushing me just out of pure fun. Warrant? They would break in, dude, and probably steal few things while I'm not looking. Most of them are dumbasses that never finished highschools and got into the service by nepotism. The whole region is the same, no wonder why the war has been so brutal.


Quote: Originally posted by Pok  
Tell the doctor that you found a piece of amber when you were in holidays at the baltic sea...you stored in under water and took it out at home when it spontaneously took fire in your hand:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18926385

This is a credible argumentation!

Go to the doctor!

[Edited on 1-8-2012 by Pok]

That would take me to the cover of the magazines, and sooner or later, this thread would become famous, as my lie about baltic holidays. ;)
I could make up that a friend of mine was playing with it. That would be credible. :)


Quote: Originally posted by gutter_ca  
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/17/phosphorous-may-h...

Supposedly happened here in San Diego.


Yes, I've seen that. Military business. Lies and cover up. Typical.
That Stone guy doesn't seem to be very smart. "There is phosphorous that naturally occurs on the sand at the beach", LOL.




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[*] posted on 2-8-2012 at 01:46


All white marine flares contain WP,
if the corruption is staggering you should not worry too much lol. bribe the doc not to tell anyone.
maybe you burnt yourself with hot jam? or soldering? or molten sugar while making caramel? the choices are endless,
how about not going o the ER but to your local doctor who you know and tell him it was a burn caused by unspecified substances, or tell the ER that. they have no right to force you to tell them, and if they try, go away and try a different ER




all above information is intellectual property of Pyro. :D
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[*] posted on 2-8-2012 at 04:53


If he wants to go to a doctor, he should make clear or give hints that it was WP and nothing else (sugar, etc.). Otherwise the doc can't give appropriate help! WP burn injuries are different from normal burns.
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[*] posted on 2-8-2012 at 08:40


I know I'm just an anonymous but listen to me please. My friend is a nurse and she says you should have gone to ER immediately when that happened. Your wound doesn't look very good. That thing absorbs constantly and can damage your kidneys and liver. Please go before it's too late. If things get worse, it can be already late, she also said that even now can be late. I'm not trying to scare you or something like that but please go to the doctor. Life is the most important.

[Edited on 2-8-2012 by freakinto]
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[*] posted on 2-8-2012 at 10:28


Quote: Originally posted by Pyro  
All white marine flares contain WP,
if the corruption is staggering you should not worry too much lol. bribe the doc not to tell anyone.
maybe you burnt yourself with hot jam? or soldering? or molten sugar while making caramel? the choices are endless,
how about not going o the ER but to your local doctor who you know and tell him it was a burn caused by unspecified substances, or tell the ER that. they have no right to force you to tell them, and if they try, go away and try a different ER


If I had the money to bribe the doc, I wouldn't be saving money to buy lab equipment. ;)

Pok is right, you can't lie because this is not a thermal burn. It's a chemical burn, and it's a WP chemical burn.
There's only one ER.


Quote: Originally posted by freakinto  
I know I'm just an anonymous but listen to me please. My friend is a nurse and she says you should have gone to ER immediately when that happened. Your wound doesn't look very good. That thing absorbs constantly and can damage your kidneys and liver. Please go before it's too late. If things get worse, it can be already late, she also said that even now can be late. I'm not trying to scare you or something like that but please go to the doctor. Life is the most important.

[Edited on 2-8-2012 by freakinto]


Absorbs what? If there was any WP in the wound, it would smell of matches. It stopped smelling like that less than 3 hours after the accident.
Thanks for being so concerned, but I really feel the same as before. I know there's the one week window for going six feet under, but you have to have symptoms for that to happen. This is not acute cyanide poisoning that throws people on the ground. If liver starts failing, I'd be having a bad time already.

I'll do a private blood test of my liver markers, that shouldn't be awfully expensive.

Day 4. I've noticed this morning that my gauze dressing is gray, meaning the silver creme is not being sucked into the wound greatly as before, and is being reduced to elemental silver after migrating to the surface.
Few minutes ago, I've removed the gauze. The wound is healing. There's scar tissue being formed, and the open, gooey area is reduced by some 75%. This is the inner side of the dressing. You can see the reduced silver around it. There's a lot less aseptic goo.

This is going to be fine. I've washed it with tap water, let it dry while swabing the surrounding area with iodine tincture, put a thinner layer of silver and another gauze.

Maybe it would be nice if the admins would add something like "burn treatment" in the title, I'd hate to see all this effort being forgotten. One day this info could save someone's ass.


Back to WP. I've put two samples out in the sun. They literally turn yellow in a matter of few seconds.

Even the first photo isn't showing the initial lack of color because it was faster than my response. You'd literally have to snap the photo as soon as you take them out of a light tight box. It takes like ten seconds to go vegetable oil yellow. The lower photo is one hour later. The samples have melted in the scorching sun. There's the yellowish crust, and you can see by the cracks in it they've gone orange. It essentially turns into the color of the raw sample before the cleaning process.
That's why I've put my clean WP in a closed coffee can with some sand on the bottom, to go by the book.

[Edited on 2-8-2012 by Endimion17]




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[*] posted on 2-8-2012 at 10:55


this is in line with my own experiences. i wanted to see if a sample could be turned, reliably, to the red allotrope by exposure to sunlight. the heat melts the sample in short order but it stays in a single mass so not much under the surface is affected. the whole sample will yellow but once it does, it reduces the amount of uv exposure beyond the surface. i uploaded a picture of one such attempt. the tube is coated inside with some mixed red and yellow phosphorus. this result was due to shaking the tube after the sample had melted in an attempt to increase the surface area. http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=65&...

i allowed 3-4 days of exposure but could not get the whole sample to convert. upon opening the tube, and scraping out a sample it would still smoke and eventually ignite.
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[*] posted on 2-8-2012 at 15:51


Quote: Originally posted by Endimion17  


Absorbs what? If there was any WP in the wound, it would smell of matches. It stopped smelling like that less than 3 hours after the accident.
Thanks for being so concerned, but I really feel the same as before. I know there's the one week window for going six feet under, but you have to have symptoms for that to happen. This is not acute cyanide poisoning that throws people on the ground. If liver starts failing, I'd be having a bad time already.



Well, you sounded scared despite that knowledge so I tried to help you. However, I am glad you are OK now. Good luck and take care. ;)
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[*] posted on 2-8-2012 at 22:45


had the wife look at your burns again and before i told her what you had been treating it with she said "he should be using silvadene (a brand name for the chemical you are using) so you were already treating it well. according to her that is what they would dress it with at the hospital (she works in the emergency department at saline memorial hospital). by this point in the healing she said they recommend to either use a double antibiotic (one without neomycin but containing polymixin b and bacitracin) or petroleum gauze ( http://store.gomed-tech.com/petroleum-gauze-5-x-9-p487.aspx do not use on a wound that has drainage as it will not absorb) for some reason they do not recommend triple antibiotic for burns. i was not clear on the reasoning for that but it turns out some people are allergic to neomycin.

above all, keep it clean and away from infectious materials. you are doing a great job taking care of it.

[Edited on 3-8-2012 by Rogeryermaw]
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[*] posted on 3-8-2012 at 01:25


More then 20 years ago, when I had my "phosphorus days" this is what I've done:

-I melted together 50:50 WP-candle wax in a test tube and mixed it with an iron wire. I cooled the test tube in cold water, broke it and the resulted rod was used to write on the walls; the marks were visible for minutes. The rod was kept underwater and always handled with some wet paper rolled around. During this experiment I learned how flamable the melted WP really is - it bursts in fire the second you expose it to air.

-trying to cut a piece of WP (under water obviously) I also learned that if cold it has the tendency to break in small pieces (very odd, since it's also maleable to an extent). That happened with a pea sized piece, and once I turned off the light I remember the wonderfull sight resulted from the small shards that shone much like the stars on the sky, scattered acroos my carpet. I also remember getting all of them as fast as I could, being stressed that one will eventually ignite, one that I missed, and this also was the fuel for some nighmares to come (I call these "chemical nightmares").

-I also tried the transition to RP and viceversa, and I was dissapointed that I only got the RP color (I used an oven for that, for some hours). I later learned that in industry some 2 weeks are commonly employed, with rigurous temperature and pressure control (and sometimes iodine as a catalyser)

-I obviously had to go the Amstrong route, and I made small blobs of tissue paper and Armstrong mix and a few grains of sand. I did this with the wet compo, and it was funny to scatter a fistfull of these during the night in some crowded area (bus stations were usually prefered); by the morning the small thingies were fully dried and watching people dancing and jumping in horror was very funny at the time. Sort of a childhood terrorism I guess...


I never had major accidents, phosphorus burns and alike and I knew exactly how to treat them (I had CuSO4 at hand). I was always prepared for the worst to happen, I knew the lethal dose and the risks etc. I did my homework before in the library (there was no Internet at the time). I also knew that a small piece (like a ladybug) would be about the fatal dose (100 mg) for an adult and that I had to swallow it in order to die; merely getting burned by it and reacting with CuSO4 the leftovers in the would would probably get a few mg at best in the system, if any, so I would have never worried or freaked out like some people here if that happened to me.

I was around 14 at the time.



Freak accidents do occur and they may not be even freak; let's say the power goes off and your magnet breaks the beaker full of finely divided phosphorus.

Were you prepared for this event?

[Edited on 3-8-2012 by a_bab]
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[*] posted on 5-8-2012 at 12:04


@Endimion17
I wanted to let you now, that this a great thread and that I really enjoyed reading it!:)

As far as experiments with white phosphorus are concerned here are a few more ideas:
Burning a piece of white phosphorus in an atmosphere of oxygen is very beautiful. It looks like sort of a sun en miniature.:cool: (there are videos on youtube). I had a teacher who used to throw a little peace of WP in hot, fuming nitric acid - very intense, dangerous reaction - the onset can be slow. If you dissolve a bit of WP in castor oil in a large flask and shake the flask you can observe very well the fluorescence. A demonstation of the Mitscherlich test is also something interesting to do, but take care not to inhale the vapours...

Here some links to videos about WP:
Mitscherlich test
burning WP can´t be extinguished by water
Se youtube for "phosphorus sun" videos.
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[*] posted on 5-8-2012 at 13:28


Quote: Originally posted by gutter_ca  
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/17/phosphorous-may-h...

Supposedly happened here in San Diego.


"There is phosphorous that naturally occurs on the sand at the beach, but no one has ever heard of pants catching fire," Stone told the Register.

“Laboratory testing confirmed elevated levels of phosphate on the rocks,” said a brief statement issued by the Orange County Health Care Agency.
The statement said the agency’s role in the matter is done.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/02/tp-hot-rocks-phos...

At San Diego County’s Department of Environmental Health, hazardous materials chief Mike Vizzier said Friday he had no plans to go looking for suspicious stones at the site. “We talked with Orange County, and they said they looked and they could not find any more,” Vizzier said.

He’s still wary about elements of the story. “We are not even convinced it was phosphorus yet,” he said.

Abbott said he has no doubt that the fire and the burns are real, but he’s baffled by the source of the flames. “It must be something that ignites at low temperature, so I am assuming the orange stuff is human made … and probably something that was designed to burn,” Abbott said.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/19/tp-fire-starting-...

Nothing about the burns there. Matches from 1800's sunken cargo are raised on occasion, causing surprises and sending divers to the hospital.

3745909895.jpg - 62kB




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[*] posted on 5-8-2012 at 14:04


phosphorus is difficult to extinguish by pouring a small amount of water over it. during my experiments i noted that when phosphorus is hot and finely divided, it can surface on water and ignite. from there the heat from ignition will keep it on the surface of the water until it is exhausted. this may also be, in part, due to the heat vaporizing the water, giving it a cushion to rest on.

that whole story about the pyrophoric rocks is highly questionable. most of the reporting is done by people with little to no understanding about the nature and properties of phosphorus. also, the fact that o.c. health care agency said "their role in the matter was done" sounds more like "we were told to keep our mouths shut and our noses out of the business".

@e17 i am sure most of us here are curious as to the progress of your convalescence. any news? pain reduced? healing well? you should be out of the woods as far as systemic damage from absorption. how are you?
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[*] posted on 6-8-2012 at 15:06


Quote: Originally posted by a_bab  
Freak accidents do occur and they may not be even freak; let's say the power goes off and your magnet breaks the beaker full of finely divided phosphorus.

Were you prepared for this event?


I don't use a magnet, only a shaped glass tube attached to a small DC motor. If something would ever break, it would be the rod. The beaker is rather thick.

(I've read about the wax thingy in one old book and always wanted to give it a go, however not on the wall, wax is impossible to remove afterwards.)


Quote: Originally posted by Heuteufel  
@Endimion17
I wanted to let you now, that this a great thread and that I really enjoyed reading it!:)

As far as experiments with white phosphorus are concerned here are a few more ideas:
Burning a piece of white phosphorus in an atmosphere of oxygen is very beautiful. It looks like sort of a sun en miniature.:cool: (there are videos on youtube). I had a teacher who used to throw a little peace of WP in hot, fuming nitric acid - very intense, dangerous reaction - the onset can be slow. If you dissolve a bit of WP in castor oil in a large flask and shake the flask you can observe very well the fluorescence. A demonstation of the Mitscherlich test is also something interesting to do, but take care not to inhale the vapours...

Here some links to videos about WP:
Mitscherlich test
burning WP can´t be extinguished by water
Se youtube for "phosphorus sun" videos.


Glad you've enjoyed it.
Isn't Mitscherlich test supposed to be a glowing ring inside the tube? AFAIK it's used by boiling cadaver samples autopsy samples of people who are suspected to have been poisoned with WP. The traces of WP are not enough to form a greenish flame, but they are visible as a faint glowing ring above the reflux zone.



Quote: Originally posted by Rogeryermaw  
@e17 i am sure most of us here are curious as to the progress of your convalescence. any news? pain reduced? healing well? you should be out of the woods as far as systemic damage from absorption. how are you?


This is day 5, and this is day 6.

This is day 7, a photo taken minutes ago.

The spontaneous pulsating pain was over few days ago, but if I lower my hand significantly, I feel a strange tingling, creeping, pulsating, unpleasant sensation at the spot of the greatest damage. As you can see, there was some gauze stuck in the wound, but it came loose after a day under the Ag-sulfadiazine. It really tends to either dissolve the scar tissue, or stimulates to body to get rid of it by oozing, so it's not a smart idea to put it anymore. I even took a shower yesterday, no longer caring if the wound gets wet. I stopped with the iodine, too.
I'm not feeling any symptoms of poisoning and today I even took a short and healthy sunbath, being careful not to expose the wound to the direct sunlight. I'm no longer wearing a dressing, except a thin one in the bed.
It might be a good idea to go and check the liver markers. Just to be on the safe side.
I wonder will there be any long lasting scars. It might be cool to wear a tiny one, as a reminder. I'll try to take a photo every day.

And here's the detailed photo of the glowing pure ingot I promised to take.

[Edited on 6-8-2012 by Endimion17]




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[*] posted on 6-8-2012 at 17:03


wow,
that looks so much better, does it still hurt?
the WP looks awesome, i can't wait untill i am ready to try




all above information is intellectual property of Pyro. :D
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[*] posted on 6-8-2012 at 20:27


both the healing and the P4 look great. my own scars are barely noticeable a year later and only if i'm looking for them. your phosphorus looks phenomenal! truly bright glow! that is a sight most will never see in their lifetime. makes me want to procure some chromic acid.
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[*] posted on 6-8-2012 at 23:10


Rogeryermaw, the phosphorus doesn't glow that much at all. It's a very pale and delicate color, much like any ZnS based glow in the dark item, but very delicate. The fumes is what makes it so nice - you can see them glowing above the phosphorus piece, up to a few cm of height. Actually it's simple: you saw a fuming piece of WP being filmed - now thing about these fumes as being phosphorescent aswell. What's nice about phosphorus is the fumes - they look "supernatural".
That photo only shows the color, which indeed I find almost corect.

I now remember my first attempt at getting some phosphorus and the first obvious source was matchbox strikers. Having collected about 100 of them, I dry distilled them in a testube under a CO2 flow. Once I set up the "aparatus" I turned off the light (my lab was in a basement). The sight was something wonderfull: the phosphorus vapors expelled by the CO2 flow looked like a green flame, fairly bright, but cold (you could pass the hand over it with no harm). That was a special magical moment, and I then understood what Brand must have felt like.


BTW, I guess it takes some serious years of playing with WP like this in order to get the phossy jaw - I'm convinced that people who made matches must have felt the smell all the time.


[Edited on 7-8-2012 by a_bab]
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[*] posted on 7-8-2012 at 03:46


Quote: Originally posted by Pyro  
wow,
that looks so much better, does it still hurt?
the WP looks awesome, i can't wait untill i am ready to try


It's ok at the moment.
Be extra careful, try with small amount first. Less than half gram in a 7 mm tube retort, to get acquainted with the process.


Quote: Originally posted by Rogeryermaw  
both the healing and the P4 look great. my own scars are barely noticeable a year later and only if i'm looking for them. your phosphorus looks phenomenal! truly bright glow! that is a sight most will never see in their lifetime. makes me
want to procure some chromic acid.


It would be kind of cool to have a "special mark", wouldn't it?
If you have a rich pinchful of K-dichromate, you can clean probably more than all the samples I've made so far, so go for it. Let's stuff the Web with these photos. :)


Quote: Originally posted by a_bab  
Rogeryermaw, the phosphorus doesn't glow that much at all. It's a very pale and delicate color, much like any ZnS based glow in the dark item, but very delicate. The fumes is what makes it so nice - you can see them glowing above the phosphorus piece, up to a few cm of height. Actually it's simple: you saw a fuming piece of WP being filmed - now thing about these fumes as being phosphorescent aswell. What's nice about phosphorus is the fumes - they look "supernatural".
That photo only shows the color, which indeed I find almost corect.

I now remember my first attempt at getting some phosphorus and the first obvious source was matchbox strikers. Having collected about 100 of them, I dry distilled them in a testube under a CO2 flow. Once I set up the "aparatus" I turned off the light (my lab was in a basement). The sight was something wonderfull: the phosphorus vapors expelled by the CO2 flow looked like a green flame, fairly bright, but cold (you could pass the hand over it with no harm). That was a special magical moment, and I then understood what Brand must have felt like.


BTW, I guess it takes some serious years of playing with WP like this in order to get the phossy jaw - I'm convinced that people who made matches must have felt the smell all the time.


[Edited on 7-8-2012 by a_bab]


Actually, it does glow like this if your eyes are accustomed to dark (20 min at least), and it's dried with a filter paper, and you wait until the oxidation really kicks in. And if it's very pure.
If you use a wet, dirty sample, you've just turned off the light and picked it out from the water, it won't be spectacular at all.
The original photo was even more glowy, so I've tuned it down to simulate what a human can see in those conditions, both the color and illumination.
Regarding the color, we all see colors differently, and the variations are amplified in the darkness, when our cone cells in the retina aren't too active. Some people will see more green, some will see more blue color.

I think the vapor "few cm above" is mostly oxidized fumes illuminated from below. The chemiluminescent vapor is rarely above 0.5 cm. It dances close to the sample. The main glow is a very thin layer close to the surface of the sample and it shimmers if you blow air to it.

Next thing I'm trying is putting WP under different air pressures. The glow is visible in a limited pressure range. I want to see if it ceases abruptly or is it more gradual.

[Edited on 7-8-2012 by Endimion17]




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[*] posted on 7-8-2012 at 04:53


Endminion, you remind me this picture. I never messed for too long with phosphorus, and my samples were not all that pure as yours.

http://www.canadianchiropractor.ca/images/stories/2010/decem...
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Endimion17
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[*] posted on 13-8-2012 at 11:52


a_bab, if only it would look that nice. :)

Here are the wound updates. I've increased the delay between every next image by one day (so day9 and day10 are two days apart), because the changes aren't that speedy anymore.
So here it is: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

I think there'll be hardly any visible scars by the time winter starts. If there wasn't for that silver creme, this would've been a different story...
My other burns are fine. I'm still missing tip of one finger where one large boil was, but it's getting fine.


OK, now for the fun part. I had a few ml of bromine left so why not trying reacting it with very pure WP? Anyone reading about it knows it's extremely violent, but has anyone ever seen it online? Here it is, a video taken a little over one hour ago.

<iframe sandbox width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/HXuKgTTfSdY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I know, this wasn't exactly a safe experiment because it's obvious the stuff was ejected out, but I had this intricate dropping mechanism and I was not close, wearing protective equipment. Also, water hose was on standby, and there was dirt, too.

The amount of WP was half of a typical pea and even that is pretty massive. The amount of bromine spent was very small. As soon as they touched each other, most of the WP was ejected. It was like deadly fireworks.

Honestly, it's a lot more loud than it seems. My camera's microphone is designed for recording mainly typical voice registers, not bangs.
I don't recommend doing this. It is VERY dangerous. It seems to be more violent than cesium and water. The danger is even greater knowing that most of the WP comes out molten and on fire. You can easily get severely hurt. If you increase the mass, this becomes a deadly weapon, so please don't do it or you will get hurt. This is far more dangerous than typical amateur explosive mixtures because it can melt your face off, and kill you during the next week. Treat it with utmost respect.

the most interesting screenshot...


[Edited on 13-8-2012 by Endimion17]

[Edited on 13-8-2012 by Endimion17]




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Zan Divine
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[*] posted on 16-8-2012 at 06:46


The high toxicity of WP usually manifests upon oral administration (about 2x toxicity of a saline cyanide).

I've known 3 people with small WP burns. One used CuSO4, two didn't. The burns healed with no toxic episodes for any of them. All of the burns in question were smaller than a dime and none of the burns were 3rd degree.

In your particular case, if you avoided the hospital, you probably did the right thing. Especially since you obviously understand the nuances of attending to this type of injury and you did everything correctly and the burn, scary and painful, was only just that because of its size. I don't think the hospital could have done a better job, maybe they couldn't even have done as well as you did.

Your story underlines the importance of rapid response. At various times I've had burning Cs and molten lithium on my fingers. Getting the offending material off rapidly was the difference between a minor discomfort for a few hours and something worse. Actually, Li was the oddest thing. It solidfied quickly, I peeled it off, used ice water and the burn wasn't even 2nd degree.

[Edited on 8/17/2012 by Zan Divine]




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RonPaul2012
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[*] posted on 16-8-2012 at 18:38


Wow this is great :D

I don't think I would ever attempt this kind of thing

I am a mad scientist after all so I can't say for sure .

I would just be afraid of getting phossy jaw.

Great post , thanks for sharing.
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[*] posted on 16-8-2012 at 19:25


phossy jaw occurs after YEARS of exposure to phosphorus and fumes associated with its production and handling and of smoking cigarettes lit with white phosphorus matches which are no longer produced. of much greater concern is immediate poisoning, toxicity of phosphorus compounds and/or the excruciating pain of burn injuries from phosphorus.

i didn't let that stop me, but that's not for everyone. whatever you do, remember safety first and you will be ok. always have an exit strategy at the ready.
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[*] posted on 16-8-2012 at 20:00


I wonder what exactly is happening to that phosphorous when it is being cleaned, in light of this thread:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=20064

I really do not think the phosphorous really dissolves in water, it only melts into smaller drops or strings. I think the subject of what those yellow impurities actually are is a more important question related to the chemistry of phosphorous than many here realise. It is difficult to say what is going on.

[Edited on 17-8-2012 by AndersHoveland]
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a_bab
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[*] posted on 17-8-2012 at 08:15


The book called "The Shocking History of Phosphorus" describes a case when elemental phosphorus, in the form of very fine particles (not visible to the naked eye) did lots of trouble by polluting the marine enviroment.

It was not believed at the time such small particles can actually survive in (salty) water without reacting with something giving their size (microns) but in the end it turned out not only did these particles survived but they also built up to the point where the marine life was seriously threaten, including large animals such as fish.
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