• Members of the previous forum can retrieve their temporary password here, (login and check your PM).

How bad have you got burned with NaOH?

Migrated topic.
W

weissewolf

Rising Star
Im just curious about any horror stories.
Ive never gotten it from extractions but I used to work with the stuff at my last job and got a rock near the tear duct in my eye. Man that was rough. :cry:
But ever since then I dress up like a spaceman before going near it. 8)
 
I've seen people get permanent scars from using sodium hydroxide.

SWIM never uses it anymore. Instead he uses sodium carbonate (not sodium bicarbonate), ammonia, or calcium hydroxide. They are all many times safer than sodium hydroxide. SWIM will NOT allow sodium hydroxide in his house period.

Sodium carbonate can bring a solution to pH 11.5.
Ammonia can bring a solution to pH 11.6.
Calcium hydroxide can get to pH 12.4.
 
No horror stories here, but SWIM faces the usual
"oh, my skin feels soapy when im rinsing my hands. Oh, yes, thats just the FAT IN MY SKIN CELLS BEING TURNED INTO SOAP" thing fairly often.
its not so bad.

69Ron: I think thats a bit extreme... but you know what you're doing im sure.

Although, as an Ad-lib, SWIM Was once on a pharmaceutical chemistry course, for 3 years... so he knows how to handle it. And picked up his professor's
bad habbits of not wearing *any* protection while dealing with it. heh!
 
I'm personally not that concerned, as long as you have some acidic stuff on hand just in case. But I think as long as you being aware/cautious you should be fine [e.g. clear bench, nothing to knock over, good stable bases on your glassware]. basically good standard lab technique.

I spent a number of years doing biotech lab work and the worst i ever got was a slight skin peel on my thumb from Phenol, stung for half a day or so, but made my thumb look younger and rejuvenated ; ) [after all they use that for face peels]. Made sure i wore gloves when dealing with dodgy stuff after that and have never had a problem.

my opinion would be that as long as you don't be stupid overly casual the likelihood of being safe is pretty high.

equally if you did burn yourself you could pretend you were a member of fight club :lol:
 
SWIM used to come home from univeristy with this (excessively) long black jumper he used to wear. the sleves would always get in the residues...

and he'd take a big whiff when he was back home and be like "mmm.... AlCl3!"
lovely stuff.
 
I usually have a bowl of lemon juice/vinegar near by to submerge affected areas. Worst I've gotten was a little reddening of the skin, poured vinegar over it and I was fine. Best way to avoid it is to work in a clear area, have everything prepped before hand. I like to work in a sink, I use goggles, gloves, long sleeves and pants. As long as you are careful, no problems.
 
You don't need all that protective wear when using bases that are much safer.

A splash of ammonia on your hand won’t do anything to you.

A splash of concentrated calcium hydroxide likewise won’t hurt at all.

Even concentrated sodium carbonate won’t hurt you if you wash it right off.

Concentrate sodium hydroxide will burn your skin right away.

People make mistakes. Even the most careful person occasionally spills something. If you’re going to use sodium hydroxide, you better be very cautious and never get any on you, especially in your eyes. It can cause permanent blindness.
 
Benzyme, that must have been diluted sodium hydroxide.

I've seen people with horrible scars from spilling concentrated sodium hydroxide on their hands.
 
benzyme said:
nitric is the worst I've gotten on myself, NaOH just reddened my skin as well.

HF is much worse. you won't feel it, and will be dead in a matter of hours if you don't wash it off. it seeps down to the bone, where it leeches calcium.
it also dissolves glass.
Click to expand...

HF is what?
 
Well, I got nitric acid on my hand one time too just a few drops, started tingling then burning, got it neutralized, but it turned my skin orange for a week :/
 
A few years back I worked at a place handling chemicals. I believe I got some sodium carbonate particles on my jeans. When I went outside in the rain, the jeans got wet. Later on I noticed that my jeans had grown some holes! :lol:

I believe it was sodium carbonate, because it was the strongest chemical there.
 
I don’t think that was sodium carbonate. Sounds more like an acid to me. I’ve spilled concentrated sodium carbonate on my hands and clothes before. I didn’t do anything. It made my hands feel a little soapy when I went to wash it off, that was it.

SWIM used pure sodium carbonate orally before to help 5-MeO-DMT absorb more quickly sublingually. It works pretty well. It does leave your mouth a little sore the next day though. Calcium hydroxide is better. Calcium carbonate works, not as well, but it doesn't burn you at all. SWIM would never even think of putting sodium hydroxide in his mouth.
 
69ron said:
I don’t think that was sodium carbonate. I’ve spilled concentrated sodium carbonate on my hands and clothes before. I didn’t do anything. It made my hands feel a little soapy when I went to wash it off, that was it.

SWIM used pure sodium carbonate orally before to help 5-MeO-DMT absorb more quickly sublingually. It works pretty well. It does leave your mouth a little sore the next day though. Calcium hydroxide is better. Calcium carbonate works, not as well, but it doesn't burn you at all. SWIM would never even think of putting sodium hydroxide in his mouth.
Click to expand...
It was the strongest chemical we had, besides possibly Calcium Hypochlorite. I doubt any of the other chemicals could do anything at all. I thought that some particles must have landed on my pants, and when it got slightly wet, some kind of reaction happened. Anyway, my pants got a little more hip 8)
 
69ron said:
I've seen people get permanent scars from using sodium hydroxide.

SWIM never uses it anymore. Instead he uses sodium carbonate (not sodium bicarbonate), ammonia, or calcium hydroxide. They are all many times safer than sodium hydroxide. SWIM will NOT allow sodium hydroxide in his house period.

Sodium carbonate can bring a solution to pH 11.5.
Ammonia can bring a solution to pH 11.6.
Calcium hydroxide can get to pH 12.4.
Click to expand...

are those ph's high enough to do the trick? how much less efficient do you think the process is versus with a ph of 13.4 plus?
 
SoCal said:
69ron said:
I've seen people get permanent scars from using sodium hydroxide.

SWIM never uses it anymore. Instead he uses sodium carbonate (not sodium bicarbonate), ammonia, or calcium hydroxide. They are all many times safer than sodium hydroxide. SWIM will NOT allow sodium hydroxide in his house period.

Sodium carbonate can bring a solution to pH 11.5.
Ammonia can bring a solution to pH 11.6.
Calcium hydroxide can get to pH 12.4.
Click to expand...

are those ph's high enough to do the trick? how much less efficient do you think the process is versus with a ph of 13.4 plus?
Click to expand...

Sodium hydroxide freebases DMT faster than sodium carbonate, ammonia, and especially calcium hydroxide. It’s clearly a stronger base. But given time, the others can extract DMT just as well if the proper tech is used.

The pKa of DMT is 8.68. That's very low. At pH 9.68 90% is freebased. At pH 10.68, 99% is freebased. At pH 11.68 99.9% is freebased. At pH 12.68 99.99% is freebased. At pH 13.68 99.999% is freebased. At pH 14.68 99.9999% is freebased. Those are the scientific facts. Considering that information, calcium hydroxide, given enough time to react (which is more than an hour), can freebase nearly 99.99% of all the DMT. Sodium hydroxide can freebase nearly 99.9999%. The different is extremely small. Let’s say we had 10 grams of DMT in a given plant. If calcium hydroxide were used you’d get about 9.999 grams. If sodium hydroxide was used you’d get about 9.9999 grams. That a difference of about 0.0009 grams! That tiny amount more is not worth it if you ask me.

SWIM can extract over 99% of the DMT from any plant using any of those bases. It all depends on what extraction tech you use. Sodium hydroxide is not needed. It’s an internet rumor that’s not based in fact. The pKa dictates what pH is needed to freebase DMT. As you can see, a pH of just 10.68 freebases 99% of the DMT. So if you can’t get 99% at that pH, you're using the wrong tech.

SWIM uses ammonia or sodium carbonate for chaliponga and chacruna and has gotten yields that surpass those that are quoted on the net by others using sodium hydroxide. It’s all about the tech you use.

SWIM has his own STB tech where he uses calcium hydroxide with mimosa and can get yields that are the same as a sodium hydroxide based tech. But again, SWIM uses a tech designed for calcium hydroxide.

All of these bases are different, and your success with them is highly dependent on how they are used. For example, sodium hydroxide is an extremely strong base. Because of that, it takes much less time to freebase DMT than sodium carbonate. So, to freebase with sodium carbonate, you need a few more minutes of reaction time.

Another example is calcium hydroxide. With calcium hydroxide, the freebasing time is much longer (more than an hour) because it has very poor water solubility, so it needs a lot of time and a lot of mixing. When doing an STB tech with calcium hydroxide, you do it like making Yopo. Yopo has been made for hundreds of years effectively using calcium hydroxide to freebase DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and bufotenine. With mimosa you mix 2 parts finely powdered mimosa with 1 part calcium hydroxide (by weight) and mix it thoroughly, then add water until it forms a stew consistency. You mix this for about 5 minutes and then let it sit OVER NIGHT. Then you extract with heptane by mixing it and letting it separate. Then you decant the heptane through a filter and freeze precipitate the DMT. It works VERY WELL. Actually SWIM finds it produces a cleaner result than the standard sodium hydroxide based techs. The reason is that calcium hydroxide causes a lot of insoluble calcium salts to form, while sodium hydroxide causes a lot of soluble salts to form.
 
For A/B and STB techs where there’s a water layer and a non-polar solvent layer, there’s something else you should know. Let's say your plant had 100 grams of DMT. If you were to freebase DMT at pH 9.68, only 90 grams would get freebased.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume we have a solvent that can extract all the freebased DMT in one shot.

If you mix in your non-polar solvent and extracted just 90 grams of the freebased DMT, what happens to the 10% of the DMT remaining in the water if the pH is maintained at 9.68? More DMT will freebase until 90% of the remaining DMT is freebased again. 90% of the remaining 10 mg is 9 mg.

So if you extract again 9 grams of DMT only 1 gram of the DMT remains. You’ve now extracted 99 grams. That’s 99% of the DMT. Again, keeping the pH at 9.68, 90% of the left over 1 gram of DMT will freebase. 90% of 1 gram is 0.9 grams.

Extract another 0.9 grams, and you’re left with 0.1 grams of DMT. You’ve now extracted 99.9% of all the DMT.

Despite the pKa, doing multiple pulls allows you to extract more than the pKa dictates. So at pH 9.68 with just 90% freebased, if enough pulls are done, you can extract more than 99.9% of all the DMT present. In reality, solvents can’t get all the freebased DMT in one pull, so you’ll usually need more than 3 pulls to get 99.9% of all the DMT.
 
thanks for the info 69ron. so it sounds like one can simply replace sodium hydroxide with calcium hydroxide in a standard STB tech, let it sit for a bit longer and expect solid results...? If that is the case then I agree it's absolutely worth it to take the safest approach.
 
Back
Top Bottom