Failure to properly store hazardous substances!

[DMSOnMyVeins]

This news story is about a young chemistry student who improperly stored chems in his refrigerator, and consequently, they exploded knocking a partition into the next door neighbors apartment.

Bond was set at $1,000,000US.

This person was also arrested in 2002 for possesion of "bomb making chemicals", however, the charges were dropped.

This is an important story for all those experimenters out there. Please be safe.

http://www1.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/MI37533/

[knowledgehungry]

Polatnick's arrest affidavit lists all of the chemicals uncovered inside the apartment, some of which include ether, potassium chloride, ethanol and ammonium nitrate.

Maybe he was an alcoholic with high blood pressure:rolleyes:. I strongly doubt it was any of those chemicals that went off(maybe ether but who stores ether in the fridge). Sometimes I hate the news so much.

I noticed that they called in a "world-renown chemist" to give his expert opinion on what the chemicals could be used to make. Man, they should have called me in I could do it for half-price:D. I used to be a whiz at interpretating IR and NMR graphs too.

I doubt it would have been AP, as AP is normally fairly safe in solution. I am hazarding a guess that it could have been NG that due to the low temparature of a refrigerator/freezer formed the highly dangerous "NG Slurpee". That is just my guess based on the vague information from the article, if they flew me in I could give a better guess;) .

[Chris The Great]

I'll bet it was the ether in the fridge. The thermometer in a fridge makes sparks you see, and ether is notorious for doing exactly what happened here- exploding any fridge that it is stored in. It does this at university labs as well though, when somebody doesn't realize that one should never store volatile, flammable materials inside the refrigerator, so this isn't just limited to the fact that it was at his apartment.

[DMSOnMyVeins]

(maybe ether but who stores ether in the fridge) .

I just saw an interview with the suspect on Channel 7 news. It was ether stored in the fridge that caused the explosion.

The bond is set at $1,000,000 and the judge refuses to reduce the bond.

[knowledgehungry]

Exactly why no one stores ether in the fridge :D!

[Bert]

I well remember my high school chemistry teacher storing the products of our organic chemistry lab when we synthesized diethyl ether, in an old fridge in the back room... Guess he got lucky on that one.

[nbk2000]

This old fridge, it didn't have the compressor on top, did it?

That'd certainly explain the lack of explosions, since the compressor turning on in modern fridges, with their bottom-mounted compressors, would put an ignition source right where the ether fumes would be most concentrated.

[Bert]

No, it was more modern but still old in 1977. I've seen the type you're thinking of- I've repaired fridges that have a bimetal temperature sensor that makes a contact for the starting relay INSIDE the fresh food section of the fridge, up near the top of the compartment. I'd imagine that would be enough of a spark to start an ether/air explosion as others have stated.

I know of one other person who experienced an ether explosion from turning on a wall mounted light switch in his "lab" area.