Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[iceball3]

I'm all for biohacking, but my first thought on hearing that was "Dear god please let him have tested that first."

Eyes are so fucking fragile, I'm not about to put random liquids into them in hopes that I can see clearer. More likely to have gone blind than see better.

By my the look of the article, it already was being used for medical purpouses, they just adjusted the mixture so it is less difficult to actually apply. Still really cool, though.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

They said that the materials used in their solution should not be used on humans or animals.... And yet they put them in their eyes.

Sounds healthy...



I'm all for night vision just not prolonged or permanent blindness afterwards.

[scrdest]

They said that the materials used in their solution should not be used on humans or animals.... And yet they put them in their eyes.

Sounds healthy...

That's probably more 'we're not using medical-grade solutions yet' not 'the substances are toxic themselves' though - the photosensitizer is used in treatment already, insulin is a human hormone and saline is... well, saline. The only component of the mix itself that might cause issues is DMSO, as it's a detergent, but I don't know if it does.

So, I'd suspect it's that, ferex, they didn't use human insulin or potentially somewhat less chemically pure solutions than you'd use for humans.

[Sheb]

Well, the first line of the Toxicity section of the wiki page for DMSO is "Early clinical trials with DMSO were stopped because of questions about its safety, especially its ability to harm the eye. " :p But upon further reading, DMSO doesn't seem that dangerous. I still wouldn't inject that in my eye though.

[Helgoland]

It's got the really cool property of 'dragging' compounds through the skin - with its help substances that could not normally pass through our skin can enter the bloodstream. I don't recall it being horribly toxic - it's a frequently used solvent in the laboratory, where it is valued for its polarity combined with aproticality (?), and it is in fact a safer substitute for some rather nasty sother solvents such as DMF.

[Sheb]

Oh yeah, it's definitely not in the "Top 10 things laying around my lab that I wouldn't stick in my eye" list, but that doesn't mean much. It's used in some alternative medicine, and doesn't seem to have terrible side-effects.

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I guess it's better than bleach or acid.... Or bleach and acid

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

While hydrochloric acids will melt your skin off and of you throw bleach on you be left with white bone and the worst smell in your life.

[wierd]

.......... (Never really had much of a problem with skin-contact strong HCl solutions... Just tingles a little, and makes a pink spot. This is the kind of stuff that makes metal smoke too.)

The one superhuman ability I seem to have, is being able to withstand surface contact with really scary shit like this. Not really a good idea to try at home, but I can literally dunk my hands into the stuff and just feel some unpleasant sensations on my cuticles, and that's it.

One time, I removed anodizing from some aluminium adjustment nuts (For large shock systems for a friend's 4WD rock crawler, that had been over-anodized, and thus could not be threaded on!) using some concentrated perchlorate salt solution (hot, not cold!), a few drops of dilute sulfuric acid to boost ion exchange capacity, and a little HCl concentrate.  It ate the anodizing off like it was candy-- again, it just made my cuticles tingle a little. (I couldn't find gloves.)

Stuff that gives other people instant chemical burns (and I mean the kind that cause black scabs, Like concentrated lye solution) just stings and makes red areas on my skin. I must be some kind of mutant or something. (also, my tears literally cause pitting and destruction of certain kinds of plastic. Found this out after going to a water park, and having my tears destroy a pair of swimming goggles. Did a little experiment there after the discovery, by having the other people I was there with put some tears on the plastic to see if similar deterioration happened. It didn't.  My body chemistry is apparently not normal.)

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Now dunk your hand in acid then pour bleach on it, if nothing else you'll get minor heat burns from the reaction but I think it would cause some serious damage even to someone like you.



I got to watch a solution such as that eat away at a like of rusted metal/gold foils. ((Experiment for school, speaking of which I now have gold bearing crystals on the bottom of a glass beaker that I have no idea what to do with because the experiment went wrong.... Horribly wrong))

[wierd]

HFl cannot be purchased without very special licenses, and is not something you are likely to ever encounter outside of a very specialized chem lab.  If you are allowed access to the supply cabinet of such a chem lab, you have already been given the training and equipment to use such substances safely. If you still somehow manage to be stupid enough to get it on you, despite using proper protocols, then I think you deserve the darwin award for your trouble.

HCl on the other hand, and H2SO4, and HNO3, (The three essential strong lab acids) are available in bulk in just about any wet chemistry lab, as they are basically essential for doing anything more complex than making "paper mache volcanoes".

The mixture of these acids together to increase ion exchange capacity is very well known; For instance, HCl and HNO3, when combined, make "Aqua Regia" solution-- the first acidic solution ever discovered that is capable of dissolving pure gold metal, and turning it into auric chloride.

(Other fun tricks-- Mix concentrated hydrogen peroxide with strong sulfuric acid, heat it up to boiling, and then introduce a metallic object, or pour it on a raw pork chop. Such fun to be had!)


While my skin is "resistant" to such mixtures, I dont feel like losing my hands, so I dont think I will try pouring the H2O2+H2SO4 solution on my hands any time soon. Hell, I wouldn't even trust a pair of nitrile gloves for that. I'd use the heavy duty black PVC gloves for that kind of stuff.

[Osmosis Jones]

HCl, HNO₃, H₂SO₄, even aqua regia aren't that scary, as basic handling and PPE mitigate most of their risks, and as long as you're near a tap, you can wash even conc stuff off before it does any real damage.

HF (which I've worked with on several occasions... drysuits suck, yo) blows, but in and of itself isn't that hard to handle. It's another acid, and is basically harmless as long as you treat it with respect... it's just that if something does go wrong, it has the potential to go VERY wrong. As a result, the OH&S is extremely tedious; unfortunately this is also the first thing that gets dropped when people get complacent. Let's just say I have seen some shit that would turn a OH&S guy's hair white with terror in some of the labs I've worked in...

DMSO is a tricky one; on it's own is mostly harmless, but if it touches skin it will get into your bloodstream instantly and you'll be able to taste it on your tongue in minutes. Apparently, my old chem lecturers, when they were undergrads, had teachers who would put a drop on a students hand (freshly washed ofc) to demonstrate this (holy OH&S Batman!). The problems though, are that it a) dissolves latex and nitrile gloves (the two laboratory standards), and b) takes whatever dissolves into it with it when it goes through the skin. If the gloves you're wearing had some nasty organic compound on them, you're about to have a very bad day.

The worst commonly used stuff is things like perchloric acid, which can form unstable (think nitroglycerin unstable) explosive compounds on reaction with organic compounds; it is generally used in special fumecupboards because of this. One lecturer was telling me stories about a lab he worked at where, after some renovations, they'd connected the perchloric fume cupboard's chimney to the organic cupboard's... apparently it went boom and blew out the side of the building.

Or refractory metal powders. Self-igniting thermite? Yay.

Although, if we're getting into uncommon... then there's FOOF.

[ChairmanPoo]

We use DMSO in the cryopreservation of stem cells for HSCTs.  It causes reactions pretty often. Not very bad, most of the time, but delicate patients are usually infused in the ICU just in case.

That's with IV administration, of  course

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

Also HCL can be baught in bulk (in the US) at lowes and Home Depot as driveway cleaner (though it's on like 34% acid IIRC

[Arx]

Another post about doing things in a Terminator-ish way:

Chinese scientists have found a way to make a liquid metal alloy that responds to electic stimuli and becomes self-propeeling when mixed with aluminium.