Safety issues

[bobo]

What kind of safety measures are you guys using? I am looking for combat wear anyway and was wondering if flak jackets and the like would do any good when working with AP, APAN and the like.

While walking past some of the yearly anti fireworks campaign stuff with blown off fingers and so on I started to consider buying motor gloves or something like that. Last weekend I met a guy who's into live roleplaying and he showed me some butchers chainmail. This stuff is supposed to protect your fingers from a butchers knife, so I wonder what help it would be in our business.

I reason that glass shards and shrapnel flying around are the main cause for ripped off limbs, but an explosion that's not even that big can blow a wooden plank in two. When does an explosive have enough power to disintegrate or otherwise amputate fingers, hands and heads?

Also, what causes eye injury besides shrapnel and splats of NaOH?

[knowledgehungry]

If you are holding something in a closed fist then the charge may be much weaker, your hand becomes the shrapnel:o. However if your holding it open handed you stand a better chance of keeping digits, anything over 1 gram can do some very serious damage, even on an open hand. Any oxidizer, acid, base or reducing agent will damage your eyes. Safety glasses are to be used at ALL times!

[flash619d]

I (and many others I would imagine) use reasonable caution as my primary safety mechanism. When dealing with chemicals, wear simple safety gear, like safety goggles, gloves and an apron. As for explosives, prevention is far better than any cure. Treat them with respect, and you will have no problems. Flak jackets and such may seem to be a good idea, but with even moderately large charges(>50g), they would amount to little more than extra shrapnel. As for motor gloves or butcher's mail, save your money. Butcher's mail would probably just make lots of sharp steel bits to get blown into your hand. Anyway, if anything goes off in your hand, you screwed up bigtime. The best way to avoid injury is to act intelligently and do your homework before doing anything.

[bobo]

I use goggles and gloves, as well as earplugs. When working with chemicals, the danger of explosion is in my case less than the chance of getting nasty chemicals in the lungs, etc.

But, even if you have done a great synthesis of AP, it's still AP right? I am thinking what difference protection would make of say kevlar gloves when a few g of compressed AP goes close to your hands.

[xyz]

Kevlar gloves will do absolutely shit all to protect your hands from AP. It only takes 0.25g of AP to turn your hand into mincemeat. I once conducted a series of tests using gelatine hands. These were made by making a 20% solution of gelatine, filling latex gloves with it, tying the wrists in knots, and then leaving them for several hours to set.

Butchers chain mail will just make lots of shrapnel to ventilate your body if you have an accidental detonation.

Kevlar would help to protect against shrapnel from low explosives, but most shrapnel from a HE device will be going several times the speed of a bullet (normally, shrapnel loses speed very quickly because it is not aerodynamic, but if you are close to the device then there will be no time for the shrapnel to lose speed).

The best way to protect yourself is simply to know what you are doing, handle explosives as little as possible, and take all the appropriate safety precautions. Safety glasses are a must during ANY lab procedure.

[irish]

My safety gear consists of a lot of caution, a cartridge resperator (sp), goggles, a good set of ear muffs and Kevlar coated neoprene wetsuit gloves (better than nothing).
As XYZ wrote to know what you are doing is the best form of safety.

[xyz]

I would also like to add that if you are handling primaries, you should make sure that any gloves or other hand protection do not interfere with your dexterity, the last thing you want to do with AP is drop it.

That said, heavy leather gloves can be very useful for protection when doing things such as melting KNO3/Sucrose rocket fuel, and Latex gloves should be worn whenever you deal with acids, strong bases, hydrogen peroxide, or other corrosives/toxins.

Other useful protective gear is a respirator/gasmask, a face shield, heavy duty elbow length chemical gloves (available at hardware shops for handling pesticides, I always wear them when handling nitric or sulfuric acid in large amounts), an apron, and your common sense, it is also a good idea to keep a bucket of cold water nearby if you will be handling conc. acids, that way you will be able to douse any spills with water.

You should also try not to wear any good clothes when handling corrosives as you will inevitably spill very small amounts, one of my best pairs of trousers had a hole burnt in the knee by a drop of 99% sulfuric acid. Megalomania, the owner of this site, once had a runaway reaction that spilled drops of nitric and sulfuric acids onto a pile of his clothes, putting small holes in all of them.

[knowledgehungry]

I would reccomend neoprene or teflon gloves actually, latex gloves do jack shit to protect from HNO3.

[Cyclonite]

A flak vest would work good, after all its used to reduce injury from grenades and such items. I have a couple of Iraqi helmets if anyone wants to buy one, they are about 1/4 the weight of a US kevlar. Who knows it may help.:rolleyes:

[aikon]

my favorite apron is a thick (about 3cm) rubber apron formerly used by a butcher.
the gloves are acid resistance and cost about 30€ in a special chemsitry shop. i know, that's a little bit expensice but they work just fine. goggles are a must!
while loading caps i recommend to wear a faceshield and heavy leather gloves too.

safety starts in your brain! don't be afraid of explosives, just have respect . do all steps slowly and be calm. if you are nervous and in a hurry while producing or handling explosives the chance to get hurt or killed is much more higher.

[bobo]

So basically the armor and apron would add substantial protection you as long as you don't hold the explosive in the hands. At a pliers range, would shrapnel velocity of a small explosive have decreased enough to make it stop in protective gloves, if it's ordinary metal?

There must be a sort of 'quantitative' model to describe the 'body destruction' effect (or whatever) as a function of distance. I can imagine there's the explosion itself to consider (shockwave) and then the shrapnel (which depends on size and shape). Is there a recommended book or electronic source that describes this kind of stuff?

[Guerilla]

A pliers range? There is no way that some gloves would effectively stop fragments of a blasting cap from that distance. I just read somewhere how a guy who had pressed HMTD into .22 casings using a 1.6mm thick steel shield as protection, when the cap accidentaly detonated, the shield was penetrated and the operator wounded by the fragments.. why not to just stick with non-fragmenting casings? :rolleyes:

[Spudkilla]

ALWAYS wear safety glasses. Someone I know was doing chemical testing, and somehow squirted herself in the sodium hydroxide (10% conc.) and was blinded in that eye for a couple of days, and has temporary facial distortion because of it.

[xyz]

I assume you mean that she squirted herslf in the eye with sodium hydroxide?

bobo, even thick steel plate will not protect you from HE fragments at pliers range. The pliers will just become even more pieces of flying metal to injure you. Using pliers or other implements to handle explosives just increases your chances of dropping them or setting them off, using your hands but being careful is the only way to increase safety.

Bomb squad members wear nothing on their hands when handling explosives, if there was a form of protection then they would use it, but there isn't.

[Cyclonite]

The reason for bomb squad members not wearing gloves is manual dexterity, otherwise we would protect them as well as the rest of the body ie..bomb suit. When using explosives the best safety device is common sense, your worst enemy is complacency. Most of the UXO items iv taken care of I didn’t wear a bomb suit due to I knew what I had and a suit would get in the way or it was too big to make a difference. Bottom line for the entire thread is use common sense don’t become complacent and if you happen to be an idiot or very accident prone find another hobby.

[Anthony]

Along with common sense, your best safety guard from explosions is simply distance. A few inches when handling a blasting cap can mean the difference between traumatic amputation and a few cuts and bad bruising.

Plastic tongs won't generate significant schrapnel and could be used for handling sensitive things. Similiarly, holding caps by the fuse or wires is common sense.

I've never seen teflon gloves and I bet they're neither cheap not easilly available. Disposable latex gloves can be had from many places (car parts, DIY store etc) in convinent quantites for pocket change. They'll give much better protection than nothing. Going off the top of my head (I can get figures for thin latex gloves if needbe), they'll protect against 50% NaOH for 4-8hrs and against 70% HNO3 will give at least 30mins.

[wrench352]

I thought this was aan excellent piece on lab safety.Its part of an excellent treastise on running a home lab:International order of Nitrogen (http://www.nitrogenorder.org/lessons/household.shtml#safety)

Also I keep a well stocked first aid kit with lots of water gel and trau-medics.:eek:

[Sparky]

I always uses neoprene gloves when handling anything corrosive. These gloves are easily available because people use them to work with solvents when painting and such. Typically a pair is $5 or so and they last indeffinately so there's no real excuse for not using them. They have good chemical resistance, better than nitrile gloves.

I also wear good safety glasses, though a full face shield would be nice. They are especially comfortable and clean. I bought them at a university in the same area where the course books are sold. They are of course for the chemistry students who must buy them but anyone can walk in and buy them.

Ear plugs are also a good safety precaution, which would have saved my friend some discomfort a few times. He always wears them now when appropriate.

Wearing cotton clothes is a good idea too.

[Anthony]

I forgot to add: I wouldn't wear ear plugs unless I was expecting an explosion, e.g. doing an impact sensitivity test.

Personally, I'd be worried that whilst wearing them, that I might miss subtle warnings leading to an unexpected event. Such as a faint hissing or popping noise coming from a mixture that you haven't realised may have compatibility issues under certain circumstances. Examples might be nitrates and metals, or KMnO4 flash contaminated with a solvent.