Dangerous First Aid Product

Guys, I was out for coffee with some of the local boat gang and we got talking about where my project with Penta was at. I stated that all the equipment needed to put her back in service was in hand except for a new stove. Of course the next question was what happened to the old one and what was it?

Well, it was a Dickinson propane 4 burner fixed stove with oven and a great cooker. About a year before we hauled Penta for the re-fit I had the inlaws out for the day and* mother-in-law (80+ yrs old) decided she was going out on deck and in going to the cabin door she somehow fell down the stairs into the aft cabin. Thankfully my wife and her two sisters were with me and they proceeded to render first aid. In doing so they opened up the first aid kit and got out two of those "cold packs", the type where there is an inner pouch of a second chemical and when you squeeze the bag this pouch breaks and the chemicals mix and get cold.

During all this uproar someone placed one of these packs on the top of the stove (it was off) and I guess there was a sharp corner that punctured the pack. The chemicals leaked down over the top left corner of the stove and ran down inside the burner tray and the trim around the oven door and its opening. One of my sisters-in-law cleaned it all up, we thought, and made sure to dispose of the remains safely.

About a month later I went to the boat and went to make a cup of coffe and* happened to look at the stove - my gawd, the entire left side of the burner tray, the oven door and the trim was all eaten away and looked like swiss cheese there were so many places it had gone right through.

Now I am certain that Dickinson used good stainless steel in constructing their stoves but whatever this crap was it just ate the stove like it was made out of paper.

Of course the stove was quite a few years old and is no longer produced and the factory had no spare sheet metal parts available so now I have a 3 burner model and have put the cold packs in a separate container so that non-crew memebers will not get a hold of them.

Given the way the stuff ate stainless steel I cannot imagine what it might do to you if you got it on your skin !!

Anyway, just a note of caution, these things are dangerous !!

*

John* MV Penta

Sidney, BC

Thank you for that report. *Who would have thunk?

I wonder if one of the ingredients in the cold pack reacts with water to form a strong acid? When the stove was cleaned did your relative use water in the process? I wonder if using something like baking soda in the water during cleanup would have prevented your stove from being eaten?

Marin - have I got a deal for you! Since I have not taken delivery of my new stove, how about if I send you a cold pack and you try it on your stove ??

How come you are not taking me up on my kind offer ??

The fellows I was with this morning suggested that I should post this warning because we all felt very few people know how strong this liquid is.

John

John--- I think the warning is a valuable thing to know. I'm just curious WHY the ingredients-- or one of them-- in these cold packs can dissolve steel. What are the ingredients and why do they have this property? I can only assume they either are or combine to form a very strong acid.* And if they do, why isn't there a conspicuous warning label to this effect?* Like "Can cause severe burns if punctured," or something like that. There has to be a*reason the cold pack has this characteristic--- I'd be very interested to know what it is.

I'm happy to take your word for what happened and see no reason to try it out ourselves on our flawlessly operating Force 10.


-- Edited by Marin on Monday 17th of October 2011 07:55:23 PM

The most common instant cold packs contain ammonium nitrate and water which are housed in separate compartments. By breaking the barrier between them, a chemical reaction between the ammonium nitrate and water causes the temperature drop.
I don't know what the bi-products*were, but depends on what was used to clean up the stove. *Could be quite caustic and maybe was even a secondary reaction with whatever the cleaning product was.
LB
*

AN and stainless are a good fit, hot or cold. I suspect your stove parts were not SS. AN will corrode mild steel and high carbon steel, just ask any old cropduster.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it: "Ammonium nitrate forms a mild acid when mixed with water. This acid can cause irritation to the eyes, nose, and skin.[11]"
I wonder if the acid became more concentrated as the water evaporated?
It's also an ingrediant in explosives. Light the stove and run!

Ammonium nitrate plus diesel was used to blow up the Federal building in OK. Post 9-11 there was a specific alert issued to report anyone bringing bags of fertilizer onto boats.

HopCar wrote:It's also an ingrediant in explosives. Light the stove and run!

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*It is an oxidizer, not an explosive by itself and poses no more risk than "pool tablets" used by some people in their MSDs.

When mixed with water, it's nothing but plant food, LOL!! *Similar to what you spread on your lawn each year. *

When my son was playing sports, we would bring the used cold packs home and pour them out in our compost pit, before disposing of the bags. *(The coach was concerned about pouring them down the sink at school.) *I would have spread them in the garden, but since we didn't know the concentrate, didn't want to burn the plants. **

At home, it's a good idea to drain the bags before disposal. *As the first post stated a leaking bag, while not dangerous per se, may result in corrosion to some metals.

Well, whatever it was, John's description of the aftermath is sure enough to give me concern. I don't recall ever breaking or opening a cool pack to spill on anything, but the consequences are exactly the kind of thing I wouldn't want to learn about later. *Who knows what chemical may have mixed with it while cleaning the stove. Thanks for the heads-up John.


-- Edited by healhustler on Tuesday 18th of October 2011 09:15:45 AM

This reminds me of the old pour Coca Cola on the hood of your car and watch the paint peel off stories. Think what that must do to your stomach. Yet your stomach has even worse acids in it already.

Hydrogen Peroxide, the old wound cleaner will actually eat your skin in stronger percentages. The drugstore sells 2-4% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) the beautician supply store sells it at 35% to put on your wifes hair. The terrorists buy it at the beautician supply to make bombs. (TATP)

A radio station listener participated in a stunt on the radio, drank too much water and died.

I guess a little common sense goes a long way. Find out what was spilled and clean it up properly. This was a good warning because no one got hurt.

Ken

Beauty supply is only about 6%. 35% is way too dangerous and requires a lot of care. Somebody told me they could buy it off the shelf at a hardware store in even stronger concentrations though.

RickB wrote:HopCar wrote:It's also an ingrediant in explosives. Light the stove and run!

Click to expand...

*It is an oxidizer, not an explosive by itself and poses no more risk than "pool tablets" used by some people in their MSDs.

It's a little more dangerous than a chlorine tablet:

The chemical compound ammonium nitrate, the nitrate of ammonia with the chemical formula NH₄NO₃, is a white crystalline solid at room temperature and standard pressure. It is commonly used in agriculture as a high-nitrogen fertilizer, and it has also been used as an oxidizing agent in explosives, including improvised explosive devices. It is the main component of ANFO, a very popular explosive. It is used in instant cold packs, as hydrating the salt is an endothermic process.

Of course, mixing powdered HTH chlorine powder with pine-o-pine can make a pretty spectacular reaction as well.

Something like that happened in my toilet (at home)*when mixing different cleaners.* At one point thought the thing would explode.

Keith wrote:It's a little more dangerous than a chlorine tablet

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Hardly. Any old fool can start a fire or gas himself to death with a chlorine tablet and some other common household susbtance.

You will be hard pressed to detonate AN by anything normal to recreational boating.

Keith wrote:
Beauty supply is only about 6%. 35% is way too dangerous and requires a lot of care. Somebody told me they could buy it off the shelf at a hardware store in even stronger concentrations though.

Click to expand...

*Walk in and ask for lab grade, if you buy more than a quart or so they will want your name and address. Or, just order it on the internet (http://www.amazon.com/H2o2-Hydrogen-Peroxide-Grade-Certified/dp/B0053Y3U7S/ref=pd_sim_hpc4) and they'll send it to you. The beauty supply stores online list up to 12% that they will sell you by mail.

If you're in Tacoma WA go to the beauty supply store just west of 38th and Steele St, south side of the road. They will sell it by the gallon if you want and you can give them any address and name you want, they won't verify. At least that's what we did for one of our bomb classes when we made TATP.

I don't suggest trying this at home. However law enforcement and fire department hazmat teams do this fairly regularly so we know what we're looking at when we find backyard chemists.

To read about how bad ammonium nitrate can be read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Disaster

*

Ken

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