On Thu, 8 Nov 2001, Philip Pemberton wrote:
    I wonder how many accidental poisonings occurred?
 A number, I would imagine, and especially in tight quarters.  I got
 exposed to some briefly during the `40s when the paper wrapping on some
 decorative steel plate caught fire and the people nearest used a Carbon
 Tet extinguisher to put it out.  Rather pungent as I recall, so it does
 provide some warning. 
  A carbon tet extinguisher? IIRC the trade name for that
stuff was "Halon"... 
 
'Fraid not.  Carbon Tetrachloride is a liquid at normal temperatures and
used to be the fire extinguisher of choice in hand-pumped extinguishers
for mobile - read cars, trucks, and buses - use.  Halon, on the other
hand, is a gas at normal temperatures and is actually breathable for
short periods.
                                                 - don
   Also in that
same era we used to degrease various components of
 Resnatron Radar jamming with carbon tet and acetone bare handed.  No one
 thought a thing of it except for the way it degreased your hide! 
 Acetone. The one
common solvent I hate to hell. It ripped apart the
 supposedly-chemical-resistant gloves I was wearing while I was using it and
 proceeded to cover my fingers in goop. Took me a week to get all the cack
 off. "Chemical resistant" my left sock.
 So what if I've chopped a year or so off my life expectancy? For that year
 or so, I've had a lot more fun than some people twice my age... Including
 making a "slugzapper" - a 150V low-current voltage source to keep the slugs
 away from my Dad's flower bed :-)
 Oh, then there was the time I "accidentally" made an EHT generator out of a
 solenoid coil and a few diodes, transistors, etc... It was supposed to be an
 LC oscillator...
 Later.
 --
 Phil.
 philpem(a)bigfoot.com
 
http://www.philpem.f9.co.uk/