How Regulations Hamper Chemical Hobbyists 610
An anonymous reader writes "Chemical & Engineering News just ran this story that relates how government regulations create a terribly restrictive atmosphere for people who do chemistry as a hobby. (A related story was previously posted.)" The article gives some examples of why hamfisted regulations are harmful even to those who aren't doing the chemistry themselves: "Hobby chemists will tell you that home labs have been the source of some of chemistry's greatest contributions. Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family's bread. Charles Martin Hall discovered the economical electrochemical process for refining aluminum from its ore in a woodshed laboratory near his family home. A plaque outside Sir William Henry Perkin's Cable Street residence in London notes that the chemist 'discovered the first aniline dyestuff, March 1856, while working in his home laboratory on this site and went on to found science-based industry.'"
Re:Bake on a stove? (Score:3, Informative)
The top part is a range. The baking part is an oven. The entity as a whole is a stove.
Of course, you could also bake on the range, but that's not as easy as just figuring out which part is the stove.
Re:Regulations (Score:5, Informative)
There are very few such labs which allow "tinkering". Such labs tend to be run either by for-profit entities which expect you to do profitable work, or research insttitutions which expect you to do work which will get you grants.
In any case, the authorites come down even on non-controlled substances, as the article indicates. What chemists consider "dangerous" isn't the same as what the authorites do. From the article, one Nobel Prize winning chemist talking about his home lab: "I don't have anything that is dangerous in my lab. I have many chemicals in small amounts--salts and buffers" as well as some organic solvents, such as methanol, Shimomura says."
Methanol is both highly toxic and highly flammable. That's what the authorities would call "dangerous" if they raided his lab (though they wouldn't blink at gasoline). I'm guessing many of those salts are at least poisonous.
"Hamfisted" is a good description. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:5, Informative)
A trip to Home Depot can net some interesting stuff too. Sulfuric acid, Hydrochloric acid, and Potassium Hydroxide, all sold right next to each other in the plumbing aisle.
Get The Golden Book Of Chemistry Experiments PDF (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bake on a stove? (Score:3, Informative)
you could also bake on the range, but that's not as easy as just figuring out which part is the stove.
I guess you meant figuring out which part is the OVEN. :-) BOTH parts are the stove. But actually thanks for clarifying -- I always thought the range was the stove and the oven was not. And can you really bake on a range? My cooking world is being turned upside down this morning!
Put a lid on a pot. Bake inside. Use a thicker pot for more temperature uniformity. Use a rack to keep your baked goods off the very hot bottom surface.
Re:Regulations (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Regulations (Score:3, Informative)
You can find methanol [mypianoshop.com] - and a bunch of other toxic, flammable solvents - at a good hardware or auto supply store. Most gas-line dryers are methanol. Just keep your methanol in a Heet [goldeagle.com] bottle and you won't get a second look.
Re:Bad example... (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know if you knew this or not, but that's not even a tongue-in-cheek example -- milk powder can be used in polymerase chain reactions (PCR), and is almost certainly the protein source of choice for home molecular biologists.
Re:I can see the the other side as well. (Score:3, Informative)
I discovered the uselessness of nitrogen triiodide as a high explosive in my home lab.
Other findings:
- It will explode if left underwater, but can be kept for long periods of time under ammonia
- It's difficult to get a good report because you can't clump it- the crystals are continuously letting off little explosions as it dries
- Clumping kitty litter gets around this nicely
- After very long periods of time under ammonia the crystals change color from black to a very bright orange- for reasons that are not clear from the literature
- If it gets on you or your clothes you can expect to be snapping and fizzling all day
- Try not to make too much
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Informative)
As for your definition of oppression, you have that completely backwards as the oppression is an action of one being on an another. One cannot oppress his or herself. Anarchy may LEAD to oppression when one person or group begins forcing another to do something against their will, but Anarchy in its purist form is the exact opposite of oppression. I think a more appropriate word for your definition would be detrimental or damaging. Law enforcement uses a monopoly of force to oppress certain targets, since Oppression is "using power to empower and/or privilege a group at the expense of disempowering, marginalizing, silencing, and subordinating another". Arresting someone is directly oppression. It may be helpful to society to do so, and anarchy would then be detrimental to society and humanity.
Re:Regulations (Score:3, Informative)
You've got that backward. Evolution is never long term. The only things that survive are those that survive right now. The cockroach about to get stepped on doesn't get to say "Hold on, your species will probably destroy itself in a nuclear holocaust, leaving us to survive. So we're clearly the better species and you shouldn't kill me". The optimum you're seeking is not a product of natural selection, but of reasoned choice of direction. Evolution says "the stupid, breeding ones win; they're the ones that are propagating into the future". Reason says "Wait a second..."
Re:Have you seen Breaking Bad? (Score:3, Informative)
Hum no not really. Regulations are always supported by insiders as a way to protect themselves from outsiders. The existing corporations have political power, the unborn competitors don't. Generally speaking, the state is a system by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:4, Informative)
Hint: when those two mix it produces a lot of heat so I would hope that the good people of Home Depot really don't store them next to each other.
Re:Distrust by the masses.. (Score:1, Informative)
Sulfuric Acid and Potassium Hydroxide neutralize each other and the resultant material is plain old H2O
No, the resulting is a solution of sulfate of potash, which you can probably find in the fertilizer aisle, and only neutral if you get the stoichiometry just right. If you mix the potassium hydroxide with the hydrochloric acid, you get muriate of potash, which is also commonly sold in the fertilizer aisle as simple potash
The parent's point is that the sheeple are a lot more scared of "chemicals" than they are of muriatic acid, which everyone seems to know is just a sidewalk cleanser. This despite the fact that muriatic acid is, in fact, a dangerous chemical, highly corrosive, gives off toxic fumes, releases additional toxic fumes during reactions, and undergoes dangerously exothermic reactions (if, for example, you were to just dump the bottle of potassium hydroxide into the HCl)
Re: "Nobody has a right" (Score:3, Informative)
You might have a point, except that the social costs of prohibition are much worse than those of regulation. If you really care about "extended social costs", you'd support policies to minimize that cost. Policies such as regulation, and treatment of addicts, instead of just throwing them in jail and forgetting about them. What do you think the extended social cost of turning millions of otherwise well adjusted, non-violent marijuana smokers into criminals is?
Re:Bake on a stove? (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dutch%20oven [urbandictionary.com]
Re:Doomsday. (Score:5, Informative)
The thing to remember about people making drugs, is that chemistry isn't a hobby for them. If they need something, and it'll cost them $50 extra so that they can smuggle it into their state, or set up a fake business to get something shipped to, that isn't a problem for them.
But for the hobbyist, unless they want to become a criminal to do their chemistry a little more safely, there's no way they're going to be able to get what they need.
In a lot of ways it's cyclical. Ban the tools people need to do chemistry safely, someone gets harmed doing chemistry because they can't get what they need, ban more chemistry equipment from hobbyists.
Re:Doomsday. (Score:3, Informative)
There is something very crazy going on over there in the States. When was the last time a terrorist attacked, and killed, Americans on home soil? With chemicals?
1995 [google.com]?