Don't drop a mercury barometer in Tunbridge Wells!

[Horsetan]

.....The GPO Phone Company, before BT, had the Trim phone, the 1960's modern designed phone of the future, complete with a tritium gas powered radioactive illuminated dial!!! The radiation was low level and safe,..... if the phone remained un-broken, and they forgot disposal of the broken or used ones entirely. Harwell Nuclear research station had to take them for disposal, and got fined for storing thousands in a skip at Harwell, as they had not thought of a way to dispose of them in an acceptable manner before production or distribution was started by the GPO....

 

Now this one interests me, as we had a Trimphone for many years. The glow from the radioactive dial was pretty weak, though.

[bertiedog]

Another memory of school chemistry is the little garden that was outside the lab and in it were a couple of brambles that produced the most luscious blackberries which we used to pick and eat. In the 6th form we discovered that the garden was where flasks of all sorts were emptied including cyanide compounds. No one appeared to suffer any dire consequences.

 

Jamie

Ever eaten Apple pips, lots of people do, but there was an old country custom of not eating any apple pips,... of course they did not know that the pips contain cyanide, not deadly, at low levels, but there is a limit to how many apples should be consumed over a period of days.

 

It seems forgotten that Onions are poisonous if raw, and it takes about 20 lbs to cause problems!, but most people know that Rhubarb  leaves contain poison and do not eat them, but it is the same poison and at a lower level that onions!! I am not suggesting eating the leaves, but it has been shown modest amounts are safe.

 

Some common vegetables were poisonous, they had to be cooked to make it safe, making a ketchup was best, the offender...Tomatoes. Thomas Jefferson's less well known claim to fame was that he risked his reputation and life, by publicly eating raw Tomatoes for the first time in the USA...........

 

The reasoning that they were poisonous had a good sound basis, the Tomato is a close relative of Deadly Nightshade, and it's cousin is the Potato, whose flowers and fruit remain somewhat deadly!

 

A old gardening trick my Grandad did was to graft Tomato plants on to Potato root stock, two crops of one plant....it did not always work with some varieties, but Moneymaker tomatoes grew on King Edwards Potatoes very nicely.

 

Stephen

[auld_boot]

My physics teacher built a device to demonstrate how all our lung capacities differed, basically it was a giant clear plastic U tube with mercury in the bottom.  The idea was to test how far you could blow the mercury up the tube. We were all meant to have a go and our marks were being recorded on the 'up' tube.  We were allowed one large intake of breath before blowing.

The experiment was never finished because one boy took his large intake of breath with the tube in his mouth and sucked back on the mercury.  I was certain that the mercury hadn't gone over the top backwards but the teacher took the boy to hospital for checks.

[bertiedog]

Now this one interests me, as we had a Trimphone for many years. The glow from the radioactive dial was pretty weak, though.

The radiation was at the same low level as a luminous watch, reasonably safe to the wearer, but deadly to the staff at the factories who manufactured the luminous hands and dials.

 

I doubt if a claim for damages would get anywhere, based on the exposure to a trim phone, more likely the odd design offended more people! the GPO had the cheek to charge extra on top of the line rental, and there was a waiting list. It was the first phone in the UK to be offered in a range of colours, and the GPO railed at the indignity of having to stock a choice in the stores at the Engineering Centres. They felt it was pandering to the public, and appealed to Wedgwood Benn, The Postmaster General, to have the range reduced......and got their way, as Mr Benn agreed that in a socialist 1960's UK, the public should have restrictions to make supplies available to all, and then he promptly put the extra charge on, guaranteeing only the wealthy could afford one!!!

 

Such was life under Dear Old Harold Wilson, who put the whole cloth Weaving industry of the north in peril after the war, by enforcing the restrictions on cloth purchase, saying it was for good sound socialist reasons, to prevent the wealthy rushing after the war to buy new clothes... great..... until the workers, his supporters were left on the dole, with closed factories.

 

Wilson's grasp on economics was tenuous to say the least, he nearly ruined the Model Railway trade as well, as he was the Head of the Board of trade that classed models as toys, and got production banned in the 1940's. It nearly closed Meccano down, and several major model companies closed down under the restrictions.

 

Stephen

[Fat Controller]

Ever eaten Apple pips, lots of people do, but there was an old country custom of not eating any apple pips,... of course they did not know that the pips contain cyanide, not deadly, at low levels, but the is a limit to how many apples should be consumed over a period of days.

 

It seems forgotten that Onions are poisonous if raw and it takes about 20 lbs to cause problems!, but most people know that Rhubarb  leaves contain poison and do not eat them, but it is the same poison and at a lower level that onions!! I am not suggesting eating the leaves, but it has been shown modest amounts are safe.

 

Some common vegetables were poisonous, they had to be cooked to make it safe, making a ketchup was best, the offender...Tomatoes. Thomas Jefferson's less well known claim to fame was that he risked his reputation and life, by publicly eating raw Tomatoes for the first time in the USA...........

 

The reasoning that they were poisonous had a good sound basis, the Tomato is a close relative of Deadly Nightshade, and it's cousin is the Potato, whose flowers and fruit remain somewhat deadly!

 

A old gardening trick my Grandad did was to graft Tomato plants on to Potato root stock, two crops of one plant....it did not always work with some varieties, but Moneymaker tomatoes grew on King Edwards Potatoes very nicely.

 

Stephen

Apricot and peach kernels contain quite high levels of cyanide, but are used in small quantities to given an 'almond' flavour to jams and liqueurs.

 The toxin in rhubarb leaves is oxalic acid; it used to be used in carriage-cleaners, and did a fine job of removing paint from carriage-siding pilots.

Tomato plants grafted on to potato stock are commercially available now, but at a price which makes you wonder why they bother.

Cassava, a staple carbohydrate for much of the world, is another plant which contains appreciable amounts of cyanide; the roots have to be carefully prepared in order to eliminate the toxicity.

I wonder how many people died before safe methods of preparation and consumption were discovered?

The Romans used lead in the glaze for wine containers, and also added it, in some form of salt, to 'improve' the flavour of wines.

[Horsetan]

....Such was life under Dear Old Harold Wilson, who put the whole cloth Weaving industry of the north in peril after the war, by enforcing the restrictions on cloth purchase, saying it was for good sound socialist reasons, to prevent the wealthy rushing after the war to buy new clothes... great..... until the workers, his supporters were left on the dole, with closed factories.

 

Wilson's grasp on economics was tenuous to say the least....

 

A tradition that continues today.

[bertiedog]

Another memory of school chemistry is the little garden that was outside the lab and in it were a couple of brambles that produced the most luscious blackberries which we used to pick and eat. In the 6th form we discovered that the garden was where flasks of all sorts were emptied including cyanide compounds. No one appeared to suffer any dire consequences.

 

Jamie

An appropriate date for mentioning brambles, as the old British Countryside Saw, was not to eat the berries after 11th Oct, as they were turned to poison by the Devil spitting on them....... more likely the toxin generated by them if left on the bush to start rotting......Saw's by the way, mean Rustic advice, usually supplied by Village Yokels, or if it is bad advice, by the Village Idiot, and every Village had one in those far off days....We have far more these days!

[bertiedog]

I an not sure of the exact formula used, but does anybody remember the small bottles of acid and mercury that were sold in joke shops, toys stores, newsagents etc., in the 1950's?

 

The solution plated copper or similar metals a lovely silver finish of a very temporary nature, but enough to make copper coins pass as silver to other school children or more gullible adults. The penny could look in dim lighting quite like a half crown, and after it faded, no evidence left!

 

The process was basically the same as mercury deposit on glass, but on metal Mercury will easily bond. I was told by my Uncle who was a chemist what the solution was, but it was 60 years ago, so forgotten, and best so, as he said it was a toxin, and irritant, and obviously poisonous.

 

Stephen

[bertiedog]

On reflection, I think the process of the liquid was to deliberately cause tarnish to occur, so that a permanent silver finish was not achieved, which will happen with mercury just rubbed on to copper.

The Bottles were marked Made in the USA, and came wrapped with an instruction sheet.

 

Edit:-

 

Further thought..it may have been an alkali solution, or ammonia, added to aid cleaning the copper to take the silver, but how it faded remains unknown.

Stephen

[beast66606]

Very nasty stuff. Corrosive burns to the surface of the skin from the hydrogen, meanwhile the fluorine sinks in and can cause deep chemical burns and start eating your bones away - slowly enough that you don't realise at first how serious it is.

 

And it can then start travelling round the body messing with calcium balance, which messes up heart regulation. Not nice.

 

To go back to how this topic started, I'd rather dip my fingers in a pool of mercury any day.

 

Or a bucket of liquid nitrogen. In fact that one is rather fun (and fairly safe despite being at -196 C), so long as you don't leave them in there too long.

 

I've done all of them.

 

When I was a Nuke we used HF to etch aluminium welds (mounted and polished first) so we could check their crystal structure, one day some got on my fingers and I had to have my fingers irrigated for an hour each morning and afternoon and then 15 minutes of gentle scrubbing with a brush.

 

We also used the liquid N to freeze peoples butties - and then we'd drop them on the table at lunch time.

 

Happy days - probably shouldn't share any stories about what we got up to with UF6 ("Hex") and the likes though.

[PatB]

Apricot and peach kernels contain quite high levels of cyanide, but are used in small quantities to given an 'almond' flavour to jams and liqueurs.

 The toxin in rhubarb leaves is oxalic acid; it used to be used in carriage-cleaners, and did a fine job of removing paint from carriage-siding pilots.

Tomato plants grafted on to potato stock are commercially available now, but at a price which makes you wonder why they bother.

Cassava, a staple carbohydrate for much of the world, is another plant which contains appreciable amounts of cyanide; the roots have to be carefully prepared in order to eliminate the toxicity.

I wonder how many people died before safe methods of preparation and consumption were discovered?

The Romans used lead in the glaze for wine containers, and also added it, in some form of salt, to 'improve' the flavour of wines.

 

Lead glazes are still widely used. And cadmium. It's  hard to get bright colours on pottery without them.

[bertiedog]

A little known nasty with HF is it is used in the vulcanising of the more specialist Nitrile rubber O rings, and rubber balls, rather than the simpler rubber types, it renders them more stable and heat proof, but if a ring is accidentally over heated, and it the touches skin, the heat and the acid cuts flesh dramatically, and it is difficult to stop the burn. I seem to remember it has to reach over 400c.

 

The same effect comes from PTFE, if overheated, and PTFE dust is known to cause problems in a workshop if it allowed smoking, the end of the ciggie was  hot enough to cause a reaction and the fumes go straight to the lungs, so do not smoke near any machining of PTFE plastic, it makes a killer even worse and quicker!

 

Stephen.

[bertiedog]

Many glass finishes used Uranium oxides, Radium, or other radio active types,, it gave the shimmering greens and oranges in Galle art Glass, from France, and other pretty dangerous oxides were used in red Cranberry glass, plus the etching acids used on cut glass, optical glass, lenses etc.

Needless to say the Radio active oxides are out of use, or banned now.

Radium itself was once used as treatment and inclusion in therapeutic medicines, a total disaster area.

 

Stephen

[bertiedog]

Some older processes were deadly, silvering mirrors etc, but not to the public, but the workers!  Some metal colouring is made with pretty noxious chemicals and aggressive cleaning agents, but some are trade secrets or known to the chosen few......

 

One amused me, Purdey the best Gunsmiths, method of gun blacking the barrels, the manager of the works said he would reveal the method, it was well known, but a little obscure, to heat the steel to a burning temperature and scrub the barrels with smelly old used woollen socks...... The burning wool and Lanolin, plus any other oil from the skin, carbonises on the surface in a very controlled way, given in Purdey's hands, the perfect gun black surface.

 Needless to say you stood up wind from the awful stench as the work proceeded......it took several hours to get it to perfection on all the parts.

 

Stephen.

[57xx]

Yes Hydroflouric acid is very nasty stuff particularly to us humans as IIRC it attacks the hydrogen bonds that hold a lot of our parts together. In the 70's it used to get produced when cars got burned out due, I think, to the decomposition of electrical wiring insulation. Apparently it used to pool after the fire service had put the fire out. We got some very severe warning about going near such wrecks.

 

It was also in the o-rings used on motorcycle chains. I seem to recall some race track marshalls getting rather nasty injuries cleaning up after crashed bikes caught fire.

[peanuts]

ah HF used to have to carry tubes of antidote everywhere in case we came across some that haddent been labeled properly bear in mind we could be moving anything upto 12000 litre IBCs of varios acids and other corrosives 

 

 worst load we had was four tons of nitrocelulose that had been festering at the back of a warehouse for years in fibreboard containers that were slowly disintergrating had to be shipped back to depot then decanted into 45kg containers for eventual incineration but only after being liberaly doused in I.P.A  and then gallons of water . had to shovel out of old conatiners using plastic shovels (no sparks) whilst in full coverage suite &  facemask in an enclosed cupboard on one of the hotest days of the summer  scary stuff 

[bertiedog]

Now, this really does directly relate to Tunbridge Wells in Kent, for whilst working in the GPO Telephone Engineering Department, the stores at TW got a call from an irate official, (when are they not irate?), saying that no permission could be given to dispose of the acid from batteries at Uckfield old exchange. The batteries were 50 volt, and several thousand ampere hour capacity. lead lined boxes containing , I think, about 4 gallons of battery acid each cell. I can't remember the total acid estimate, but Uckfield RDC utterly refused to dispose it in Sussex.

 

The GPO would have to take the cells to Tunbridge Wells, where the Engineering Centre was in Kent by a few yards, and then arrange disposal.

 

But  they got an estimate from a contractor and refused to pay the thousands required for a hazardous chemical transfer, so they got my companion and I to take a Morris Minor, empty, to Uckfield and drain each battery into a plastic drum, and put two into the Minor, and drive the 2O odd miles very carefully indeed to TW. this took a few days to complete, and we had the entire supply of acid in the yard in the drums. The thought of what would have happened if the brakes were applied hard did cross my mind once or twice on the trips.

 

Then came acid disposal, with a back of an envelope calculation by an ex Army GPO engineer that so many lbs of soda would be needed to neutralise the acid.

 

We built a dam of sacks of caustic soda from the stores around the main drain of the yard, after checking it went to main drainage, not a cess pit or soak away, and simply poured the acid on to the sacks.

 

He was about right, the last acid took the last caustic and it worked, but there were repercussions later on, when the drains were checked and found to be corroded, and comments were made at the time about the cleaned up appearance of the yard. They also needed new cast iron drain cover grills as they broke up.......

 

Also the nearby housing estate made comments about the smell of rotten eggs wafting about in the air ( acid plus reinforcing rods!)..........we denied all knowledge.........The Telephone Managers Office did query why the stores needed to replenish the Caustic Soda supplies though.

 

Stephen

[bertiedog]

On the subject of Pretzels, now there's a leap from caustic soda.......or is there...... as Pretzels brown colour comes from the immersion of the bread dough into strong caustic soda, which caramelises the surface chemically, and it is neutralised by the baking heat.

 

The question one must ask is who was the German baker who dropped bread dough into caustic soda, then risked cooking it and tasting the stuff!!!!

 

it is not usually advised to do the process at home, I have done and it works, but curious cooks can try soaking bread dough in Bicarbonate of soda for about 30 minutes and baking to get a similar effect. not as brown, but tasty......and completely safe!!!

 

And for the UK reader, by Pretzels I mean the genuine large ring type from Germany, not the mini snackpack horrors sold in the UK.

 

Stephen

[BG John]

We built a dam of sacks of caustic soda from the stores around the main drain of the yard, after checking it went to main drainage, not a cess pit or soak away, and simply poured the acid on to the sacks.

 

He was about right, the last acid took the last caustic and it worked, but there were repercussions later on, when the drains were checked and found to be corroded, and comments were made at the time about the cleaned up appearance of the yard. They also needed new cast iron drain cover grills as they broke up.......

 

Also the nearby housing estate made comments about the smell of rotten eggs wafting about in the air ( acid plus reinforcing rods!)..........we denied all knowledge.........The Telephone Managers Office did query why the stores needed to replenish the Caustic Soda supplies though.

 

Stephen

Which probably explains the fanatical response in the OP! Or would the response be the same anywhere?

[pete_mcfarlane]

An appropriate date for mentioning brambles, as the old British Countryside Saw, was not to eat the berries after 11th Oct, as they were turned to poison by the Devil spitting on them....... more likely the toxin generated by them if left on the bush to start rotting......Saw's by the way, mean Rustic advice, usually supplied by Village Yokels, or if it is bad advice, by the Village Idiot, and every Village had one in those far off days....We have far more these days!

Is that a folk memory of the start of winter? Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors split the seasons into summer and winter, with October or 'Winterfylleth' being the demarcation.

 

(I only know this from liking the band 'Wynterfylleth', who are a rather good English black metal band, although this is something of an acquired music taste....).

 

Radium itself was once used as treatment and inclusion in therapeutic medicines, a total disaster area.

That would be the legendary 'Radithor' of 'The Radium water worked fine until his jaw came off' fame. Ironic, when you think about the current  levels of panic around anything mildly radioactive.

 

In a previous job I used to visit the hospitals in Stoke. We'd drive past the 'Welcome to Stoke-on-Trent. Nuclear free city' signs erected by the council, and then go to a meeting where we discussed (amongst other things) the Hospitals' radiology department IT systems. I guess the signs were to stop the Navy basing Trident submarines in the city centre, rather than preventing radiotherapy......

[phil-b259]

The radiation was at the same low level as a luminous watch, reasonably safe to the wearer, but deadly to the staff at the factories who manufactured the luminous hands and dials.

 

I believe one group of people particularly affected by this were women whose job involved painting the needles and figures on aircraft instruments during WW2. To achieve a nice fine tip to the brush it was common to dampen it by the simple expedient of placing it in their mouths - thus ingesting small quantities of radioactive paint each time, which cumulatively built up to gave them mouth cancers later on

[pete_mcfarlane]

I believe one group of people particularly affected by this were women whose job involved painting the needles and figures on aircraft instruments during WW2. To achieve a nice fine tip to the brush it was common to dampen it by the simple expedient of placing it in their mouths - thus ingesting small quantities of radioactive paint each time, which cumulatively built up to gave them mouth cancers later on

That's quite a notorious case, although it happened before WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls 

[PhilJ W]

If any part of a potato is green it is also poisonous. Things such as alcohol and penicillin are also poisonous but our kidneys are good at flushing them out, in the case of alcohol it causes dehydration which in turn is the reason for hangovers. Another dangerous substance is flouride, and they put that in drinking water! It is a by product of some steel making processes and is so toxic that it was expensive to dispose of until its use was found to prevent tooth decay so the steel producers found a market for what was highly toxic waste. It was a scientist employed by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation who discovered the benefits of flouride.

[phil-b259]

If any part of a potato is green it is also poisonous. Things such as alcohol and penicillin are also poisonous but our kidneys are good at flushing them out, in the case of alcohol it causes dehydration which in turn is the reason for hangovers. Another dangerous substance is flouride, and they put that in drinking water! It is a by product of some steel making processes and is so toxic that it was expensive to dispose of until its use was found to prevent tooth decay so the steel producers found a market for what was highly toxic waste. It was a scientist employed by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation who discovered the benefits of flouride.

 

The positive effects of teeth from consuming fluoride were actually recognised as far back as the middle ages (though obviously at that time they didn't know dissolved Fluoride in the water was the cause - simply that water from certain springs seamed to be benifical) so its not as if the BSC were actually doing anything particularly radical when they were able to find out the science behind it.

[bescotbeast]

My physics teacher built a device to demonstrate how all our lung capacities differed, basically it was a giant clear plastic U tube with mercury in the bottom.  The idea was to test how far you could blow the mercury up the tube. We were all meant to have a go and our marks were being recorded on the 'up' tube.  We were allowed one large intake of breath before blowing.

The experiment was never finished because one boy took his large intake of breath with the tube in his mouth and sucked back on the mercury.  I was certain that the mercury hadn't gone over the top backwards but the teacher took the boy to hospital for checks.

There's always one