In retrospect, a miner was probably the worst job I could've chosen.
No no, that would have been a lye maker. At least as a miner most people would try to keep you alive. As a lye maker? Ridiculed and shunned
You ever gotten lye on your soft tissue? Let me tell you, I never want to experience that again.
Actually yes....... I don't have a problem with lye. I test lye soap by touching a tiny bit of the soap shavings to my tounge. If it burns, its too alkaline.
Lye doesn't bother me that much. If you are scared of lye burns, wash the affected area with dilute vinegar.
I am not scared of lye burns. I can spray oven cleaner straight in my skin without issue.
I once got pure, unadulterated lye on my lip. I had thought it was milk, and brought the glass measuring cup up to smell it. Very glad I didn't drink it. A friend of the family once died in hours from drinking what she thought was baby formula while babysitting.
For awhile, before the meth cooks ruined everything, you could buy practically pure crystallized lye under the brand name "red devil". Clear crystalline solid. Sodium hydroxide lye. Potent stuff. Makes leather smoke. I found it irritating enough that I needed to wash it off. I don't know how or why, but I am highly resistant (not impervious mind... just resistant) to corrosive chemical agents. I have seen people blister and chemical burn instantly from foaming oven cleaner. Me? I can spray it on my hands like hair mousse, and clean the oven without gloves and be just fine. Just makes my fingerprints go away for a few days. No rash or anything.
LOL... there was that one time in college whe I spilled the "strong" HCl on my arm... it destroyed the shirt horribly, and gave me a slight pink spot. The pink spot didn't show up until a day later. I sometims joke that I'm not human. LOL.
And no, I am not kidding. I'd happily make a youtube vid of myself cleaning the oven if requested.
I can also clean with pure straight bleach without issue. Happily make a vid of that too.
These days it's nearly impossible to get pure lye. Instead, I use a ceramic crucible, a blow torch, and baking soda.
Baking soda is food grade sodium bicarbonate. If you heat it over 700 degrees or so, all the chemically bound carbon dioxide will boil off, leaving a "pink-glowing" hot liquid, that readily cools into a clear mass. This mass is sodium oxide, which on contact with water, turns into lye. (Sodium hydroxide)
Its either that or jump through hoops and sign tons of paperwork when you want to get good lye for making soap. For some reason the dea and pals think you are telling fibs when you say "making soap" as the reason for buying a pound of clean lye. Thankfully you only need a few tablespoons to make a small batch of soap, so the blowtorch method, while expensive, is enough to suffice. Just do it outdoors, and watch out for spatter and caustic vapor. Wear suitable protection.
As for how you could mistake lye water for milk, I have no idea. Lye has a very intense saline-like scent. Unless your nose is broken, you should have noticed long before actually getting any in/on your mouth. I taste the soap shavings for the alkaline burn because the smell of the soap overpowers my sense of smell. (All I smell is fresh soap smell)
Lye water also heats all by itself to near boiling when freshly mixed from raw crystals as well.. very exothermic. Pure lye water will clarify after it cools off, like salt water does, so for it to be milky, it must have had some kind of surfactant mixed in to help it clear clogged drains, or been freshly mixed. If the latter, it would have been very warm, from said reaction.
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