Cleaning up after toxic chemical spills

[Pretty green flame]

Good evening.

 

I have recently found a paper bag of Pb3O4 (around 20 years old), the case is that the bag was ripped and some of the red lead fell on the floor.

 

How can this be cleaned up without raising dust, i'm thinking about something chemical to convert it to something non or less toxic so it won't poison me as badly when i atempt to clean it.

 

Thanks

[Rogue Chemist]

Mist it with water till its soggy, then wipe up with paper towels, wash floor with dil nitric, wash with water.

[Swany]

Mercury metal really is a bitch, if it gets into something that traps miniture globules of it, such as carpet. I dont know how the spill kits work, I suppose you could dump acid on it, then vacuum, as simply using the vacuum cleaner straight doesnt seem to pick it up, just spread it.

 

If it werent toxic, I belive I would have sex in it. On it, that is....

[TheSidewinder]

Mercury *is* a bitch to clean up, but he's talking about Red Lead.

 

And the "mist-with-water" idea is a good one. FIRST, get gloves, apron/labcoat, and a proper respirator for Lead. Inhalation of the dust is a definite no-no.

 

Then, mist all of it until it's quite damp, wipe with paper towels, mist again, wipe again, trying to always wipe towards the center of the spill. Repeat until you are getting no more red smears. Then clean with some appropriate solvent/cleaner (I'm not sure if dilute Nitric Acid would be the best one to use, though), again wiping it all up with paper towels.

 

Put ALL the paper towels in a plastic Ziplock or something similar, seal it, then take it to your locel hazmat recycle site and tell them you're "pretty sure it's lead, but can't be certain" or somesuch. If you really DID just find it on some property not your own, then tell them that. But, if you meant it was in your garage for 20+ years and you had forgotten about it, find some way to shift attention away.

 

You might want to make it appear that YOU are NOT the source of the spill, or someone might start asking questions about "further possible contamination", a buzzword used by government bureaucrats to mean, "We're going to stick our noses up your ass and make your life miserable".

 

And please, do NOT discard this shit just anywhere. You already know that Lead is nasty in all its forms...

 

M

[Mumbles]

On a solid surface, you add zinc to the mercury and sweep away the algamam. You then want to pump the heat up to 80+ F and open the windows and vent for a few days.

 

For carpet, you cut out that section of carpet, and repeat the above heating.

 

I do think the wetting of the red lead is best. Even using dilute acetic acid may be of some use to clean it up. Chances are you may stain the concrete if you wet it or use acid.

[Boomer]

It was two years ago, some might remember from E+W, but it definitely belongs here for you to roll on the floor laughing:

 

I was just transferring a glass bottle with 110ml nitro when the doorbell rang. To get it out of sight I put it in the wardrobe, top compartment, and forgot about it. *Somehow* the glass cracked and the content dripped from top to bottom, soaking clothes on the way, soaking into the (antique) furniture's wood, finally running under a 100 dollar-per-meter parquet floor.

 

Not wanting to throw out the inherited wardrobe, or rip out the floor, but having had a bad headache after the first night, I have slept on the living room coach for a fucking *two years* now to avoid the nitro vapours. The doors are not too airtight in my flat, and I just realized I had no nitro headaches since then. Hell I even stopped using gloves for NG plastique, and took some huffs of ethyl nitrate without ill effect. Immunization I guess.

 

Unfortunately my un-movable 1500-pound water bed is in there, and I miss it since it’s good for the back. BTW it had triggered the idea to “test it out” in more than one female visitor prior to the spill. Any idea if it’s safe now to move back into the bed room?

Not only for my back….

[Rogue Chemist]

Ever had any problem taking a plane after that? I imagine everything has some ammount of nitro on it and with the random swabs for exlosives these days...

[Swany]

I was rather worried, as one of my dads friends almost got stuck in South America, due to handling NG pills, we are talking 5mg per pill, I belive, and not even direct contact...

 

Natrually, I have NG everywhere...

 

I really do feel very sorry, even though I did laugh maniacally. I have a water bed, and sleeping on the couch forever wouldn't be good. Plus, whenever it was 'used' any grand delusions of happyness by my girlfriend would be over turned by pounding headaches. She doesnt like NG.... heheh.

 

You make me smile, Mister Boomer. To quote someone, 'Most people outgrow their pyromaniacal tendancies, we are those whos tendancies outgrew us.'

 

I can only hope to be like you.

[asilentbob]

Bump... and quite applicable in this case.

 

So I received two (2) lots of ceramic chemicals today in the mail. Packaged the fucking worst I have ever seen. One lot was thankfully free of spills. The other lot however obviously had a leak from one of the bags as the whole inside of the shipping "bag" that contained all the chems in one lot was covered in a fine reddish-orangish powder. Since both lots were so poorly labeled too I had to dig around with gloves searching for the only 2 reddish-orangish chemicals... Turns out it was the 1.5lbs of lead tetroxide (red lead). Why 'o why out of the 12 or so chemicals did it have to be the most poisonous strongly oxidizing lead compound? The inner zip-lock and the outer thin/weak as hell plastic bags both had a clean about 1" long slash through them. Ok. Time to clean up best I can. Donned respirator. (Already had gloves on) I removed the inner zip-lock bags holding all the chemicals in the contaminated lot and set them aside trying to get as little red lead on them as possible. Then I funneled all the red lead that hadn't made its way to the cement floor of my garage into a yogurt container and set it aside... Then I put all the contaminated now empty outer plastic bags, paper funnel, shipping sleeve, etc into some 2x bagged small trash bags (without touching the clean outside surface of the bags with the very contaminated nitrile gloves.) and set them aside. Then I had my mom fetch a disposable sponge, some water (+ a drop of dish washing soap) and a container to pour contaminated water into. Then I decided that was as much as I would be able to cleanup with soap and water alone as what is left is mostly in the cracks of the concrete and doesn't seem to want to budge. Its not much, but getting it out is greatly preferable. I don't need to save it, just dispose of it.

 

As I see it now I have a couple options to try:

• Spray on concentrated vinegar and wipe up with paper towels. I have up to 20% acetic to work with, and plenty.
  
• The above with dilute nitric acid. If it will work well I would consider it a worthwhile loss of nitric.
  
• The above with using "Simply Green"... it works wonders with bright coated flake Al... maybe it will with this too.
  
• Applying some acid to make the lead soluble like above, but instead of paper towels applying crushed (ball milled or mortar and pestle) bentonite from cat litter as is done with oil spills to soak them up. I actually have some ceramic grade fine as hell kaolin and some other kind of dry clay I could try too.
  

I fine way to spend christmas eve huh?

 

Anywho... Any ideas? Or suggestions of what anyone thinks might work better and why they think so?

 

 

Edit: Appears that dilute nitric isn't such a great idea:

"Lead tetroxide reacts with dilute nitric acid forming lead nitrate and precipitating lead dioxide."

but...

"[...] and a dilute nitric acid-hydrogen peroxide mixture." (referring to what it is soluble in)

Source: Handbook of Inorganic Chemicals by Pradyot Patnaik pg.485 via google books.

 

However I'm not ready to go wiping HNO3/H2O2 onto the concrete floor. I'm wondering how well a very dilute HNO3/HCl mix would work. There is also the possibility of forming some complex with ammonia or something.

[Mumbles]

The HCl in there would likely still produce a precipitate. PbO2 or PbCl2, take your pick. I personally like the idea of soaking up some of the fun stuff in soln with the clay. I'd go with the vinegar first for the cheapness and the lack of using the more useful nitric.

 

I have also noticed that a lot of ceramic places do not bag well. Normally my stuff comes in a plastic bag, twist tied shut, with a paper bag over the top. Often the staple that closes the paper bag pierces the plastic bag. They got the dichromate bag, but luckily it was large enough in grain size that it didn't leak. They didn't catch the Pb3O4 though.

[hst45]

asb, I've gotten the same type of packaging from a ceramic supplier from the northwest (you know who). It cracks me up that the granola-munching, Al-Gore-voting, global-warming-whining, sandal-wearing ex-hippies will package a bunch of toxic chemicals in crappy enviro-friendly bags instead of a sturdy plastic container and by doing so let the lead-based/mercury-containing/heavy metal laden chemicals that they ship spill out into the environment on their way to make "war is never an answer" jewelery.

[asilentbob]

Well these were actually from an individual up in the same area, not that company, but yeah I'm going to still risk an order to the place you speak of. Gotta get me some k-dichromate, maybe more KNO3, CMC gum, copper carbonate, and ceramic fiber paper. I have other things I'd like to put in the order, but they are not as necessary. Maybe I should specify "double heavy duty zip-lock bagged and in stout plastic tubs." I was going to put the order in before x-mas and the holidays but school stuff and misc projects got the best of me and I continue to put it off. Same with a spherical and flake Al order and at least one 8" spherical hemi set order. Maybe MgAl too.

 

Anywho... I sprayed about 200-300mls of 10% acetic acid over the area and some water so the whole area was soaked, let it sit for a while... applied more (about 50mls) acetic acid... let sit... and again... then applied a bunch of bentonite... let sit... gathered up and put in a big tub along with the other waste water... and repeated everything except for the gathering up of the bentonite... I'm going to let it sit overnight... maybe longer, then gather it all up and find a hazardous disposal place... maybe keep it until next semester and see if I can put it in with the heavy metal inorganic waste tub for my college... except I would need to filter out the clay and boil it down... but thats trivial...

 

The acid didn't seem to react noticeably... in the book it did say glacial... Hopefully it did help significantly though. Also the "Simply Green" applied to paper towels seemed to clean off the red lead on some of the baggies pretty well. There is still some residual contamination, so I have the contaminated ones kept separate from the others though a very very very minuscule amount of red lead dust falling into a bag of chems shouldn't matter much at all, I may need to depend on the purity for something sometime. Probably not, but its good practice anyways.

[psyco_1322]

Is red lead oxide really that bad? Obviously I know nothing about it, besides its a lead compound. Sounds worse than Dichromate, just why would you wanna mess with someting like that?

[tentacles]

It makes good dragon eggs, and it's much cheaper and more availible than the alternative bismuth compounds..

 

From what I've read, it's particularly bad because it's a very tenacious powder, sticks to everything, and gets everywhere. Lead compounds are particularly bad to inhale, as almost all inhaled lead is absorbed into the body. Ingested isn't so bad, usually, but read lead dissolves into PbCl in the stomach. I think part of it is the stigma of it being a lead compound. Many pyros with lead media don't think twice of inhaling a little mill dust, which certainly contains lead, all of which you inhale will be absorbed into the body.

 

In short, it's just another compound we work with that will kill you in small quantities, and will do it in a particularly nasty, slow way.

[Bonny]

As Tentacles said, it is just another compound that will kill you in small quantities... In many cases toxic chems (like barium) are not avoidable, but in my opinion this one is. Personally, I don't plan on using red lead or any lead for that matter. I have replaced all my milling media with brass and only use the more expensive bismuth trioxide for dragons eggs.

[Draco_Americanus]

asb, I've gotten the same type of packaging from a ceramic supplier from the northwest (you know who). It cracks me up that the granola-munching, Al-Gore-voting, global-warming-whining, sandal-wearing ex-hippies will package a bunch of toxic chemicals in crappy enviro-friendly bags instead of a sturdy plastic container and by doing so let the lead-based/mercury-containing/heavy metal laden chemicals that they ship spill out into the environment on their way to make "war is never an answer" jewelery.

hey now, there is nothing wrong with wearing sandals !!