Monthly Archives: August 2023

A Ride in a Vintage Ford Tri-Motor

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Recently I had the occasion to take a ride in a vintage Fort Tri-Motor aircraft operated by the Experimental Aircraft Association, EAA. Among many other things they take it upon themselves to maintain and circulate certain aircraft around the country for display and to offer rides. The whole enterprise is about promoting civilian aviation and encouraging youth to pursue a career in aviation. The best way to generate enthusiasm is to give rides. This visit was sponsored by the local chapter of the EAA.

This transport aircraft is a 3-engine, high wing tail dragger. The skin is made of a corrugated aluminum alloy covering an all-metal frame. The Tri-Motor has all metal control surfaces which was unusual for the time. The corrugation serves as a stiffener but does increase the drag a bit. From 1925 to mid-1933, the Ford Company produced 199 copies. Ford stopped production in favor of more profitable opportunities. The EAA Tri-Motor is a 1929 Ford 4-AT-E with serial number 69. According to Wikipedia, there are currently 8 Tri-Motors with Airworthiness Certificates. and another 5 under restoration.

The Tri-Motor view of northern Colorado from 1000 feet.
The Trimotor’s starboard radial engine with instrument cluster.

The two outboard radial engines each had engine instruments located just above the cowling for “easy” viewing. Evidently this was a concession to practicality and avoided the problem of routing cables and tubes to the cockpit. In those days, avionics were just a twinkle in the designer’s eyes and were largely mechanical in nature with cables and tubes with fluid.

View of the cabin from the last row of seats.

The Tri-Motor gives the visual first impression of being sort of a brick sh** house with fins- sturdy, stable and slow. But, looks hardly matter and we had a great ride from start to finish. It was a calm morning with no convection activity and stable air. Winds were calm and the temperature was ~70 oF. A searing, hot summer day at 5000 ft ground elevation is not the best thing for slow, lumbering aircraft. The density altitude can climb to the equivalent of 9000 feet affording a low rate of climb. There were a few dark scud clouds loitering below the 2000 ft ceiling.

We circled the nearby city and came back on a long final approach. The view from the airplane is quite nice, much like flying in a fish tank. The pilot greased a two-point landing. It’s not a high-performance bird by today’s standards with it’s 93 knot cruise but it could carry 11 paying passengers beginning in the mid 1920’s.

The Tri-Motor was designed to be a reliable transport for passengers and cargo but falls short in the “need for speed” department. One barrier to higher performance in the 20’s and 30’s was a reliance on low compression ratio engines. I say “reliance” because the fuels available then were prone to knocking or pre-detonation if the compression ratio got too high. Knocking or detonation before a piston finishes its compression travel up the cylinder (pre-detonation) could harm an engine and certainly robbed it of power. Aircraft engines are run at constant high rpm compared to automobiles because they have no transmission. As a car accelerates to cruising speed, the gearing is adjusted to maintain optimum rpms on the power band. This allows lower rpm as cruise speed is approached. Aircraft are notable for their lack of a gearshift handle.

The 1920’s were a period of transition in which higher octane fuels were being developed so high engine compression ratios and higher power could be achieved. Tetraethyllead was commercialized in 1924, but was found to be quite toxic to workers in its manufacture.

Early on the development timeline of gasoline engine, it was found that gasoline engines had limitations in power output. One path to higher power output was to increase the compression ratio in the cylinders. Greater piston travel meant more power produced per cycle. Unfortunately, this eventually led to undesired knocking. Incidentally, ignition by compression is how a diesel engine works.

>>> Here is how I wedge chemistry into a post about an airplane. <<<

An interesting article on the history of antiknock additives can be found here and a much better one here. The production of bulk 100 octane aviation fuel was a key factor in the British establishing air superiority over the Luftwaffe in WWII. Across the Atlantic it was none other than Jimmy Doolittle who convinced the US military to convert to higher octane avgas (Incidentally, Doolittle had a Masters and PhD in aeronautics from MIT). In the mid-1920’s Doolittle was pushing seaplanes for the Navy to their limit in speed. He achieved numerous speed records and won many prizes for this. Doolittle would later win acclaim for leading a successful April 18, 1942 bombing raid of Tokyo from an aircraft carrier. Doolittle had a remarkable career and his contributions to many aspects of American aerospace were invaluable.

There were two aspects to manufacturing higher octane fuel at a profit- blending and the manufacture of tetraethyllead. Blending was just a normal refinery operation. Production of tetraethyllead was chemical synthesis to produce an organometallic substance that had to be optimized and scaled up.

Tetraethyllead is synthesized by reacting a sodium-lead alloy with chloroethane- a mixture pretty close to Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The reaction produces tetraethyllead, sodium chloride and unreacted metallic lead. Isolation of product from the reaction mixture is achieved by steam distillation. That tetraethyllead (i.e., something with metal-carbon bonds) is stable in the presence of steam is, in my mind, remarkable. Tetraethyllead is a neutral, hydrophobic substance that is soluble in the hydrocarbon fuel.

Numerous organometallic antiknock additives were found such as the piano-stool complex Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT), Ferrocene (the first metallocene), Tetraethyllead, and Iron Pentacarbonyl (Yikes!).

Side note: A serious MMT manufacturing explosion happened in Jacksonville, Florida in Dec. 2007. The blast killed 4 people and injured 14. It was estimated to have been equivalent to 640 kg TNT. Loss of cooling led to a runaway of the batch reaction.

>>> Back to regular programming <<<

Performance specifications straight from Wikipedia.

Original Specifications

  • Crew: 3 (pilot, co-pilot, flight attendant)
  • Capacity: 11 passengers
  • Length: 49 ft 10 in (15.19 m)
  • Wingspan: 74 ft 0 in (22.56 m)
  • Height: 11 ft 9 in (3.58 m)
  • Cabin length: 16 ft 3 in (5 m)
  • Cabin width (average): 4 ft 6 in (1 m)
  • Cabin height (average): 6 ft 0 in (2 m)
  • Cabin volume: 461 cu ft (13 m3)
  • Empty weight: 6,500 lb (2,948 kg)
  • Gross weight: 10,130 lb (4,595 kg)
  • Fuel capacity: 231 US gal (192 imp gal; 874 L)
  • Oil capacity: 24 US gal (20 imp gal; 91 L)
  • Powerplant: 3 × Wright J-6-9 Whirlwind 9-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engines, 300 hp (220 kW) each for take-off
  • Propellers: 2-bladed fixed-pitch propellers

Performance

  • Maximum speed: 132 mph (212 km/h, 115 kn)
  • Cruise speed: 107 mph (172 km/h, 93 kn) at 1,700 rpm
  • Stall speed: 57 mph (92 km/h, 50 kn)
  • Range: 570 mi (920 km, 500 nmi)
  • Service ceiling: 16,500 ft (5,000 m)
  • Absolute ceiling: 18,600 ft (5,669 m)
  • Absolute ceiling on 1 engine: 7,100 ft (2,164 m)
  • Rate of climb: 920 ft/min (4.7 m/s)
  • Time to altitude: 7,200 ft (2,195 m) in 10 minutes

Congratulations to India on Successful Moon Landing. Condolences to Russia on the Loss of Luna-25.

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Congratulations are in order to India’s space agency, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), on their successful moon landing with Chandrayaan-3. This is a great achievement for any organization and India well deserves their feeling of pride in the accomplishment.

A soft touchdown on the moon is a challenging task every time it is done and requires that a great many systems in a lengthy sequence of events perform perfectly. Presently, the rover has deployed properly and is in motion.

Source: ISRO.

The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is comprised of a propulsion module, a lander and a rover. Each is equipped with scientific instrumentation.

Lander

  • Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment (ChaSTE) will measure the thermal conductivity and temperature of the lunar surface.
  • Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) will measure the seismicity around the landing site.
  • Langmuir Probe (LP) will estimate the near-surface plasma density over time.

Rover

  • Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) will derive the chemical composition and infer the mineralogical composition of the lunar surface.
  • Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) will determine the elemental composition (Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Ti, Fe) of lunar soil and rocks around the lunar landing site.

Propulsion module

  • Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) will study spectral and polarimetric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit in the near-infrared (NIR) wavelength range (1–1.7 μm [3.9×10−5–6.7×10−5 in]).

Russia’s Roscosmos Space Agency suffered a setback in its moon landing ambitions with the loss of its Luna-25 lander. Launched August 10 from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in southeastern Russia, contact with the craft was lost after a command was sent for it to lower its orbit around the moon. By August 20 Roscosmos had to conclude that the vehicle had impacted the moon. This was the first Russian attempt to land a probe on the moon since Luna-24 in 1976. The goal was to land at the 100-kilometre-wide Boguslawsky crater.

Source: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

The science payload aboard Luna-25 was substantial-

  • ADRON-LR, active neutron and gamma-ray analysis of regolith
  • ARIES-L, measurement of plasma in the exosphere
  • LASMA-LR, laser mass-spectrometer
  • LIS-TV-RPM, infrared spectrometry of minerals and imaging
  • PmL, measurement of dust and micro-meteorites
  • THERMO-L, measurement of the thermal properties of regolith
  • STS-L, panoramic and local imaging
  • Laser retroreflector, Moon libration and ranging experiments
Source: Luna-25 Lander.

Government Regulations: USC vs CFR

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I’m in the middle of sorting through government regulations and I thought I’d pass along some definitions to help grasp just What. The. Hell. Is. The. Difference between the United States Code, U.S.C., and the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The EPA has a website that describes the regulatory process.

  • First in the sequence, bills are written, debated, and voted upon. The legislative branches write a law and the President signs it or does not. If signed the law is sent for inclusion into the U.S.C.
  • Next the new law needs to be “codified” into the United States Code. This is the official compilation of US Federal law and is published every 6 years. In between publications, annual cumulative supplements are published.
  • Once codified in the U.S.C., the government agency tasked with putting the law into effect (promulgation) may (or may not) rewrite the code into a comprehensible form that can be understood by the public. The relevant agency is also responsible for enforcement.

Regulations Can Expand or Evolve

If the agency becomes aware of issues in need of regulation, it may generate new regulation and place a “Notice of Proposed Rule Making” in the Federal Register for public study and comment.

After the comment period, the agency may or may not update the proposed regulation(s) and issue a Final Rule. The Final Rule is then published in the Federal Register.

Regulations are codified in the official Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is split into 50 subject matter categories called “Titles.” An electronic copy of the CFR called eCFR and is kept online at this link.

Scientific Fraud Allegations at Poltroon University

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(This is a 2012 post that I’ve dredged up to run through the mill again.)

Poltroon University, Guapo, Arizona.  A scandal has rocked the Institute of Quantum Cogitation at Poltroon University. A graduate student and supervising faculty member stand accused of academic fraud. The office of University Chancellor Clodagh A. Gatwick released a statement indicating the matter was under internal investigation.

Associate professor Corey Irwin was placed on administrative leave while the graduate student, Ragnar Ostrom, faces possible suspension.

Irwin and Ostrom were initially accused of falsifying results from a series of thought experiments published in Physics Expecta Acta, 2007, Section B, 256-278.  However, it was later determined that the falsified thought experiment results were in fact plagiarized from a future thought experiment to be published by Faroe Island physicists Spotsandottir and Dotsson. The two physicists were surprised to learn that their work was being usurped by other workers.

The Society of Thought Experimentation was contacted for comment but issued a press release stating the Society was still imagining what it’s position would be.

A Second Edition Organic Chemistry Textbook

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On occasion I step off the industrial hamster wheel for a few minutes to have a look around. In Linkedin this morning I saw a post for the 2nd edition of Organic Chemistry by Jonathan Clayden (Author), Nick Greeves (Author), Stuart Warren (Author), Oxford University Press, ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0199270293. From inside the hole along the creek where I spend my free time, I was never aware that Warren had an O-chem textbook.

Amazon allows you to examine a bit of content on-line. If you teach O-chem, this text is worth a look in my estimation.

Many of us are familiar with Warren from his book Organic Synthesis: The Disconnection Approach, 1st edition 1982. A second edition was released in 2008. Retrosynthesis was spreading around to the far-flung corners of the chemistry polygon then. Warren’s book was quite useful in demonstrating that technique for devising an organic synthesis.

An interesting interview of Warren can be found at The Skeptical Chymist from 2009. Warren died in 2021 at age 81.

How much CO2 reduction do we actually need?

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I am asking this question because the transition away from fossil fuels will have a serious knock-on effect on a very large sector of the global economy. Of the total liquid hydrocarbon production, 14 % goes to the petrochemical markets. Of natural gas production, 8 % goes to petrochemicals.

There is a serious complication connected with the idea of shutting down the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels. The elimination of oil and gas combustion activity means that crude oil production drops precipitously and therefore so would refining. Oil refineries are designed to maximize the volume of their most profitable products while minimizing their cost to manufacture. I refer to gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel. Petrochemicals come from oil and gas. Their economics ride on the coattails of fuel production to some extent in terms of scale. Refineries are physically large operations so as to operate with the maximum economy of scale. Maximum economy of manufacturing scale drives consumer prices downward.

Refineries produce much more than fuels. They produce asphalt, lubricating oil, polymer raw materials, petrochemicals for pharmaceuticals and other raw materials for thousands of products we take for granted. There are countless uses for petrochemicals beyond throw-away plastic bottles and bags. Just look around where you are sitting this very moment. Unless you are in Tierra del Fuego or Antarctica, you can’t help but see examples of hydrocarbon applications.

“Our economies are heavily dependent on petrochemicals, but the sector receives far less attention than it deserves. Petrochemicals are one of the key blind spots in the global energy debate, especially given the influence they will exert on future energy trends.” Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director, IEA

The Future of Petrochemicals, IEA
Flow of oil and gas streams to chemical product production. Source: The Future of Petrochemicals, IEA.

Could refineries adapt to the loss of a large fraction of their fuels production and still produce petrochemicals? Engineering-wise, I’d say yes. But as far as economics go, that is a harder question to answer. Company officers have a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. This is a baked-in feature of corporate business. The promise of ever-increasing margins and volumes is part of that. Switching gears towards sustaining the petrochemical sector in the face of declining fuel sales is natural in one sense, but if it involves declining EBITDA over time, it could be disastrous for the stock market. Petrochemical prices might have to climb drastically to sustain earnings. Players in the global oil & gas market are extremely twitchy. The mere suggestion of a potential problem is enough to send prices soaring or diving. Luckily, a wind-down of fuel production will take some time during which the players might be able to compensate.

Look around you. How many consumer goods come in plastic containers or plastic film-coated paper? All of our electronic devices are built into casings of some sort, most of which have plastic or fiberglass (resin impregnated glass fiber) components. The list is endless. For many or most of these things to stay on the market, a substitute material will be needed to replace the hydrocarbon-based materials. Wooden casings for computer monitors and iPhones? What about paint? Paint is loaded with hydrocarbon components.

A vast number of products we take for granted use hydrocarbon materials in some way. Perhaps renewable plastics will scale to meet certain demands. Recycling applies only to those plastics that can be melted- the thermoplastics. Thermoset plastics like melamine cannot be melted and so cannot be recycled. Recycling only works if consumers close the recycling loop. Plastics must be carefully sorted in the recycle process. When a mixture of plastics is melted, the blend can separate like oil and water producing inferior product. National Geographic has a good web page describing recycling.

Some plastics such as clear, colorless polyethylene films are usually pure polymer. Most synthetic polymers are colorless. In general, any synthetic polymer that is colored has pigments in it. Black plastic is loaded with soot for instance. Many polymer films for packaging are multilayered with different types of polymer layered together.

Waste thermoplastic with food residues is very problematic, especially those with oil residues. Waste plastic for recycle must be clean. Multilayer plastic films are not suitable for recycling either.

Source: Technical Bulletin, Saint Gobain. Multilayer film structure with 3 different films and two tie layers between them. The Nylon layer provides toughness and tear resistance. The polyethylenevinyl alcohol (ethylene-vinyl chloride copolymer) layer (EVOH) blocks the transmission of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) layer provides broad chemical compatibility along with biocompatibility for safe handling of biopharmaceuticals. Not all polymers are compatible with melt bonding. The tie-layer is a melt-bondable adhesive polymer film that hold the layers of polymer into a single film. The tie layer polymer is often a polyethylene film that has a surface layer of organic acid or anhydride groups that can bind to other polymers by melt bonding.

Other additives such as plasticizers are present in flexible plastics like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or other compositions where suppleness is important. Pure PVC is rigid. Additives are an industry unto its own. The varieties and grades in the plastics business is mind boggling. The variety of plastic compositions is too diverse to allow recycling of all plastics.

The point of this plastics background is to suggest that there are so many types and blends of plastic on the market- which is made even more complex by labels and additives -that the scope of polymer recycling must be narrowed to a few of the larger volume plastics. This is what is done today. LDPE, PP and PETE are the major polymers that are recycled in the US. Apparently, Japan is good at recycling. We in the US do poorly.

Polymer manufacturing is likely to continue indefinitely. There is simply too much money at stake for the big oil & gas and petrochemical players to deconstruct themselves to a large extent. They will, however, follow the consumer, but how far?

So, the question is this- for the sake of keeping a viable petrochemical stream in place while hydrocarbon fuel consumption declines, how much hydrocarbon fuel can we burn per year without exceeding the capacity of the earth to absorb the CO2 produced? We want to lower the slope of the atmospheric CO2 curve enough to achieve a reasonable steady state. The global economy depends very much on the production and use of petrochemicals. People will generally avoid economic suicide.

Where is the balance point for a sustainable production of necessary petrochemicals and the decommissioning of hydrocarbon fuel production? I certainly don’t know.

Chemical Emergencies and Safety Data Sheets in Education

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Note: Below is a quick safety brain-dump from a career in academic chemistry labs and chemical manufacturing facilities. It is not meant to be an unabridged guide to lab safety. Look elsewhere for that. it is easy to overlook Safety Data Sheets that come with chemical purchases.

At some time in their chemistry education the student should have had a good look at the chemical Safety Data Sheet or SDS for the chemicals and solvents they are using. While not necessarily very informative in terms of reaction chemistry, these documents are taken very seriously by many groups who can/will have an impact on your chemistry career and safety. Regardless of your walking-around-knowledge about a chemical substance, you should understand that the people who respond to emergency calls for a chemical incident will place a high reliance on what is disclosed on an SDS. A student who is connected with an incident won’t be the first point of contact when the fire department or ambulance arrives and wants information. In fact, it is highly unlikely that a student will ever have direct contact with a responder unless it is with an EMT.

Know where the SDS folder is. It may be in print or online.

When emergency responders arrive at the scene of your chemical incident, they will have protocols built into a strict chain of command. All information will pass through the responder’s single point of contact. The fire fighter with the fire hose is not the person you should try to communicate with. Information regarding the incident must be communicated up the chain of command from your site incident commander. The person responsible for the lab should know who that is. The staff at the incident site (your college) will also have protocols built onto a chain of command. Again, “ideally” the incident commander at the incident site will ask for information from others on the site regarding details on the event including the headcount (!) and communicate it to the incident commander of the responders. This is done to avoid confusing the responders with contradictory or useless information. Do not flood the responders with extraneous information. Don’t speak in jargon. If there are important points like “it’s a potassium fire”, pass it along. If there are special hazards like compressed hydrogen cylinders present, they’d like to know that too. Answer their questions then step back and let them do their job.

When responders arrive at the scene of a chemical incident, the first question they will ask is if everyone is accounted for. If everyone is accounted for, they will not risk their lives in the emergency response. However, if there are people unaccounted for or known to be trapped in a dangerous place or incapacitated, the responders will take greater chances with their own safety to rescue the victims. They will act to minimize property damage only if it can be done without risk to life and limb. Nobody wants to die saving property.

College chemistry departments that I have been involved with have had a flat policy of evacuating everyone from the building and congregating them at a defined location in response to an alarm. That way there is at least some reasonable chance that an accurate head count can be made. If technical advice is needed, faculty connected with the incident site should be consulted. The college will have an Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) group or person who presumably will take charge of the incident on the incident side. The leader of EH&S should be informed of any hazards unique to the substance of concern if there is no SDS. Let them communicate with the responders. Generally, we chemists help most when we keep out of the way.

College chemistry departments are famous for housing one-of-a-kind chemical substances in poorly labeled bottles in faculty labs. These substances almost never have any kind of safety information other than perhaps cautionary advice like “don’t get it in your eye.” Luckily, university research typically uses small quantities of most substances except perhaps for solvents. Solvents can easily be present at multiples of 20 liters. These large cans are properly kept in a flammables cabinet. While research quantities may not represent a large fire hazard initially, there could easily be enough to poison someone. When you get to the hospital, the ER folks will have to figure out what to do with your sorry ass lying there poisoned by your own one-of-a-kind hazardous material.

In principle, the professor in charge of a chemistry research lab should be responsible for keeping an inventory of all chemicals including research substances sitting on the shelf. Purchased chemicals always have an SDS shipped with them. These documents should be filed in a well-known location and available to EH&S and responders.

The chemistry stockroom is a special location. Chemicals are commonly present at what an academic might call “bulk” scale, namely 100 to 1000 grams for solids and numerous 20 L solvent cans. The number of kg of combustibles and flammables per square meter of floor space is higher here. The stockroom manager should have a collection of SDS documents on file available to responders.

Right or wrong, people positively correlate the degree of hazard to the nastiness of an odor. Emergency responders are no different. This is another reason why it is critical for them to have an SDS. People need to adjust their risk exposure to the hazard present as defined by an SDS. We all know that some substances that are bad actors actually have an odor that is not unpleasant for a short time, like phosgene. Regardless of this imperfect correlation, if you can smell it, you are getting it in you and this is to be avoided. Inhalation is an important route of exposure.

In grad school we had an incident where a grad student dropped a bottle in a stairwell (!) with a few grams of a transition group metal complex having a cyclooctadiene (COD) ligand on it. Enough COD was released into the stairwell to badly stink it up. They didn’t know if it was an actual chemical hazard or not, so they pulled the fire alarm handle. The Hazardous Material wagon showed up right next to 50-60 chemistry professors, postdocs, and grad students. The responders were told what happened and with what, so they dutifully tried to find information on the hazards in their many manuals. They did not find anything.

They had 50-60 chemists within spitting distance but didn’t ask us any questions. This is because they are trained to respond as they did. This was a one-off research sample of a few grams but it had an obnoxious smell with unknown hazards. Finally they sent in some guys in SCBA gear and swept up the several grams of substance and set up a fan for ventilation. Don’t be surprised if the responders don’t have special tricks up their sleeves for your chemical event. They can’t anticipate every kind of chemical incident.

HazMat Team. Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazardous_materials_apparatus

Long story short, both the responders and the chemists didn’t have any special techniques tailor made for this substance. There was not evident pyrophoricity or gas generation. It was a dry sample so no flammable liquids to contend with. The responders used maximum PPE and practiced good chemical hygiene in the small clean up. Case closed.

An SDS is required for shippers as well. It shows them how to placard their vehicles according to the hazards. Emergency responders need to see the SDS in order to safely respond to an overturned 18-wheeler in the road or to a spill on a loading dock. It could also be that the captain of container ship wants to know precisely what kind of hazardous materials are visiting his/her ship.

Finally, an SDS should be written by a professional trained to do it properly. By properly I mean by someone who understands enough about regulatory toxicology, emergency response, relevant physicochemical properties, hazard and precautionary statements and shipping regulations to provide responders with enough information to respond to an incident. Here, incident means an unexpected release with possible exposure to people, a release into the environment or a fire or possible explosion.

In my world, the word “accident” isn’t used so much anymore. With the advent process hazard analysis (PHA) required by OSHA under Process Safety Management prior to the startup of a process, potential hazards and dangers are anticipated by a group of experienced experts and adjusted for. So, it is getting harder to have an unexpected event. “Accident” is being replaced with the word “incident.”

Toxicology is a specialty concerned with poisons. Regulatory toxicology refers to the field where measurements and models are used to define where a substances belongs in the many layers of applicable regulations. Toxicity is manifested in many ways with many consequences and each way is categorized into levels of severity. There is acute toxicity and there is chronic toxicity. Know the difference. That said, dose and exposure are two different things. Exposure relates to the presence of external toxicants, i.e., ppm in water or micrograms per cubic meter of air. Dose relates to the amount of toxicant entering the body based on the exposure time in the presence of a toxicant and the route of entry.

An SDS uses signal words like “Caution”, Warning”, or “Danger”. A particular standard test is needed to narrow down the type and magnitude of the toxicity. The figure below from the GHS shows the thresholds for categorization of Acute Toxicity.

Credit: Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals.

Hazard and precautionary statements are important for an SDS. Rather than having everybody dreaming up their own hazard descriptions and precautions, this has been standardized into agreed upon language. Among other sources, Sigma-Aldrich has a handy list of Hazard Statements and Precautionary Statements available online.

Regulatory toxicology is very much a quantitative science enmeshed with a web of regulations. The EPA for instance does modeling of human health and environmental risks based on quantitative exposure or release inputs. Without toxicological and industrial hygiene testing data, they may fall back on model substances and default, worst case inputs to their models. In reality the certain hazard warnings you see on an SDS may or may not be based on actual measurement. The EPA can require that certain hazard statements be put on a given SDS based on their assessment of risk using models or actual data.

To be clear, hazard information reported on an SDS are considered gospel to emergency responders. Chemists of all stripes should be conversant with Safety Data Sheets and have a look at them the next time a chemical arrives. Your lab or facility should have a central location for SDS documents, paper or electronic.

In the handling and storage of chemicals, some thought should be given as to how a non-chemist would deal with a chemical spill. Is the container labeled with a CAS number or a proper name rather than just a structure? A proper name or CAS # could lead someone to an SDS. Is there an HMIS or other hazard warning label? There are many tens of thousands of substances that are either a clear, colorless or amber liquid or a colorless solid. If not for the sake of emergency responders then for the poor sods in EH&S who will likely have to dispose of the stuff when you are long gone. Storing chemicals, liquids especially, with some kind of secondary containment is always a plus. Keep the number of kilograms of combustibles and flammables in the lab to a minimum. A localized fire is better than a fire that quickly spreads to the clutter on the benchtop or the floor.

The Stupid in All of Us

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I’ve been struggling to find the words to accurately and succinctly describe MAGA followers in the US with their silly contrarianism and shallow theories of patriotism. I do this because there is something truly peculiar about the shape of conservatism today. I’ve been avoiding the word “stupid” because I didn’t want to hurl the accusation towards people with genuine cognitive disabilities. After all, intelligence is a multilegged attribute that encompasses too many diverse abilities with a single word. But of late I’ve decided that the word is fine to use if you don’t associate it with cognitively disabled people. Online you can find a definition defining it as “behavior or actions that show a lack of good sense or good judgement.” If it isn’t a clean detachment from the cognitively disabled, then at least it is only a superficial scratch.

Ex-president #45 took a sharp swerve from the “norms” of American politics and examples are too numerous to list here. His angry movement didn’t fall out of thin air. In the 2016 election he attracted followers by his audacity and with the propaganda engines of Twitter, conservative radio and television news. They were already out there primed by the nascent Tea Party, but along comes #45 giving them a charismatic and bellicose populist leader with a knack for getting on the news. His rhetorical skills are unmatched and he knows instinctively how to attract and excite a crowd. Importantly, he is a master of social media muckraking. He is not in the least inhibited by social norms for civil discourse.

The big hammer that American conservatism wields is the view of the “good us vs the bad them.” Somehow, the “bad them” always involves liberalism. “Them” can be the flavor of the day- immigrants, abortion, Muslims, NATO etc. This is guaranteed to frighten a certain fraction of the electorate. Throw in the eschatology of conservative Christians claiming that American politics will lead to or accelerate the end times and you have potent brew of dread fear.

Just to be clear, in US history there have never been long stretches of time when citizens frolicked innocently in green pastures of civility and peace was upon the land. There has always been turmoil and hardship somewhere for someone. We’ve always had murderers and thieves preying on the innocent and unwary. Yet the US experiment with democracy and capitalism overall has thrived, dipped and recovered over time. Somehow, Americans have avoided fascism. Until now.

There have always been exceptional people in the world who were able to rally groups for an epic cause, whether it was for military, political or religious purposes. It is the story of history. Today is no different, although the means and speed of persuasive communication has advanced considerably. After the invention of the printing press, there was opposition by religious leaders claiming that easy and rapid availability of information or propaganda would destabilize their personal view of how the social order should be. Since then, ideas of all sorts have found their way into the minds of the masses at increasing speed to this very day. Today, populist rhetoric and opinion can travel internationally at speeds limited only by the clock speed of computers and the speed of light.

There has always been a fraction of any population that gets agitated or frightens easily. Fright can come from direct experience or persuasion. Anything that threatens perceived safety, stability or income will unnerve people to some extent and some much more than others. It is called economic disenfranchisement and it is widespread in the US. Money equals power and lacking it means that one is not invited to the party.

The feeling of being cheated also agitates people. And this is where #45 excels. Unfortunately, in the US there is a large group of people that have not been able to fully enjoy the fruits of our civilization. For many reasons they have been passed over in terms of opportunities to advance or just keep up with the times.

One effect of technological advance is the obsolescence of labor-intensive jobs. Labor costs are always a target for innovators and businesspeople in the eternal march towards greater efficiency. This has been happening since the invention of the wheel. Any given task can be the target of cost reduction by lowering of the headcount. It may seem coldhearted but, in society, it is as ever-present as gravity.

People who lack valuable skill sets or those made obsolete by technology or corporate maneuvering are at a serious disadvantage in American society. People who chose life paths that did not include educational enrichment such a trade school or college have long been at a disadvantage. A comfortable retirement after a lifetime of low wages is difficult or impossible. Some people manage to excel but most don’t. Some start businesses that take off. Most don’t because they don’t know how or lack startup capital. The market can only sustain so many nail salons or restaurants in a given location.

Indicted ex-president #45 discovered his knack for anger politics at some point and jumped on it at a time when conservative electronic media was blossoming. He couldn’t help himself. His authoritarian impulse found a venue in politics and wide acceptance.

The acceptance of authoritarian leadership is particularly stupid for a citizen in a democracy. Our democracy is extremely unusual in human history. Many of us fail to appreciate that.

All of us exhibit stupidity now and then. We all commit “behavior or actions that show a lack of good sense or good judgement.” I do, that much is certain. We live in a time when a great many fellow citizens assent to a movement that, in the end, is not to their best interests. Not all stupid behaviors are equal in magnitude or in the kind of harm produced. It seems to me that gladly accepting authoritarian leadership in anger is especially stupid. Democracy once forfeited is not easily retrieved.

Trading away many of the benefits of democracy for some perceived guarantee of social order is a prelude to dictatorial government. Democracy is inherently chaotic to some extent. This is at the core of the American experiment. In exchange a notch of social order we trade some measure of freedom and liberty. Voting for authoritarian governance is the final act of a democracy.

The Folly of it is Stunning

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When I look around I marvel at how quickly some things can happen. How is it that so many people prostrate themselves in front of a madman like Trump since 2015? So many people are able to ignore the lies, aspersions and exaggerations that he casts about, and they even increase their support for the man as the felony indictments accumulate. Who would have guessed that America would fall into this tar pit of absurdity?

I’ve always suspected that the American experiment would collapse at some point, like all empires do. But to do so at the hands of a cartoonish, thuggish wannabe dictator-real-estate-developer-TV-star is just too much to bear. It’s so incredibly disappointing.

The Trump lovers seem unlikely to respond to reason in their lifetimes. They will go to their graves having given themselves to a confidence man who spoiled the American experiment.