I've read some of the comments, and no, my condition was definitely not caused by the light from magnesium burning. Remember, these symptoms don't ONLY point to ocular UV exposure. I've done this magnesium test in a few of my videos before, including my nitric acid and chlorosulfonic superacid videos, and I've messed with it a lot more outside of my videos as either ribbon or flash powder, and it has never given me any issues. And, most tellingly, the symptoms went away after the doctor rinsed my eyes out, which points STRONGLY to this being chemical irritation. What's that? Some of you STILL don't believe me or the doctors? Well then, let me put some numbers behind what I'm saying, to prove my point: let's say I burned 100mg of magnesium (it was probably closer to 75mg, based on similarly-sized piles I've actually measured). A university tested the UV output of a jet of air-dispersed magnesium powder in a 2" graphite pipe, and the highest instantaneous (non-sustained) flux they reached was 1500 W/m2 with a magnesium mass flux of 1.8 grams per second. Using the inverse square law, this correlates to a UV density of only 1.5 J/m2 for 1.8 grams of magnesium at 0.8 meters (about the distance of my face from the magnesium, before I moved even further away as it burned)...but wait! That was for 1.8 grams of magnesium! I used at most 100mg...so my flux would be at most 0.08 J/m2. According to a 2010 study, you need 0.12 J/m2 to suffer from photokeratitis. You could argue that UV reflected off surfaces or got intensified by using POCl3, but really, you'd be grasping for straws at that point, considering I did move further away as it burned AND used less than 100mg. Final verdict: no photokeratitis. Also, I know it might seem like I'm being rather casual about almost blinding myself (like I was when I accidentally overdosed on super-caffeine in the last video). That is just my personality and communication style: I'm not exactly the most dramatic person. I recognize the gravity of my mistakes, and the horrific outcomes that could've transpired. I want these videos to serve as reminders to be safe, and show that I'm not infallible. Mistakes can be made, and hopefully this will be the last serious mistake I make in one of my videos!
It would be worth checking for other factors that may have caused the injury. During incident investigations, it is easy to get hung up on the obvious factors and miss something else.
Yes and No. Yes, that probably is not from the magnesium burning. No, i don't think, that it's not from burning some stuff. The photokeratitis could be caused by the weird side product, which burned in 9:38. Also not from the light which got emitted in the visible range, rather UV-light, since you didn't burn much of it. The symptoms you described reminded me of working in a steel manufacturer where things got welded together. I only looked once for only a brief moment directly into the blue light which emitted by welding. And i had similar symptoms as you, although i didn't need to go to ER. But the feel of moving my eyes against sandpaper is so unique that you only can understand the uncomfort when you personally had contact with that topic.
You mentioned that you saw more intense magnesium flashes. But the wavelength of light and intensity are not necessarily coupled. A weaker flash but with more UV could do more damage than a more intense flash.
The symptoms and their delayed onset, combined with the fact you were thorough/cautious with the hand washing/shower afterwards (and before symptom onset), really makes me suspect UVC flash burn from looking at the magnesium burn experiment without eye protection. Just because you've burned magnesium, or other stuff in conjunction with magnesium, and had no ill effects (gotten lucky) before doesn't mean you can rule it out this time.
Exactly what I was thinking. I haven't gotten my eyes sunburnt before, but the ppl I know that have, described identical symptoms. A friend similarly did burn his retinas from welding (auto dimmer malfunctioned), and I got a gnarly sunburn on my face after 30 total seconds of exposure. Electrical arcs and burning metal are no joke.
Had the exact same symptoms after not wearing eye protection while watching a friend of mine weld something. Didn't even look straight into it, but I also got sunburn on my face from just these 20min or so.
@@engineer0239 Little tip for you, if you're not welding but working around people that are - wear a normal pair of plastic safety glasses, they block out 99% of the UV spectrum that gives you arc-eye.
I have a similar story to yours. A couple years ago I was sealing PCl5 in ampoules to protect it for long term storage. I had 50g, so I sealed it in five ampoules made from test tubes containing 10g each. I wore a respirator, but wasn’t wearing goggles. I thought using my M40A1 gas mask was overkill, and the goggles didn’t fit with the respirator on. I mistakenly thought it wouldn’t be an issue because the area was extremely well ventilated. Turns out I should have wore the gas mask. After the ampoules were made, I washed up, and tried to go to sleep. As soon as I shut my eyes I noticed a strong burning sensation accompanied by profuse tearing. This mostly went away when my eyes were open. I realized this was probably caused by PCl5 vapor, so I promptly washed my eyes out. It took two attempts. After rinsing them for about 20 minutes the burning, and tearing stopped completely. Lesson learned: always protect your eyes even if it requires the use of a bulky, uncomfortable gas mask. You can never be too careful. Try to build a decent fume hood, be extremely cautious with these types of phosphorus compounds. They really are quite nasty.
I'm starting to think the common factor here is PCl3: it's volatile, it forms when PCl5 is heated (which could happen if you're ampouling samples), and it was also formed when I tried distilling in the steel retort. Plus, it's also WAY more toxic (similar to cyanide actually), which, combined with its chlorinating properties, make it a much better candidate for this kind of injury. I think I'll pin this comment to show that my related experience wasn't just a fluke...right now, most people seem to be under the impression that I developed photokeratitis from the magnesium flash, which doesn't seem right to me, given how many times I've looked at much larger magnesium fires without injury.
Not completely related as no chemicals are involved, but these are also the same symptoms of arc burn. Though I doubt welding was taking place. It is just interesting to see that different causes can have the same symptoms, the feeling of sand paper when you close your eyes is really not a forgettable experience.
@@LabCoatz_Science It's too bad you unpinned your other comment with a lot of people telling you that it was most likely due to UV burn. Seems like confirmation bias Burning is not sharp "sandpaper" type of pain, and also yours did not go away after rinsing for 20 minutes. I'll copy my comment once again, it may be not useful to you, maybe it will be useful to others reading it under the pinned comment: As a welder, I can confirm, that your symptoms are exactly the same as the ones caused by harsh UV exposure. Starting not right away, massive tearing, feeling of sandpaper that grows over several hours to a degree when it's unbearable. In this case any antibacterial eye drops with anti-inflammatory effect would work (pretty much all of them). I'm not saying that is what necessarily happened to you, just saying that the symptoms you described are pretty much identical. Also in welding it's also like that, from time to time, when people around you weld and not every time you are quick enough to close your eyes, most of the times nothing happens, but rarely, suddenly it causes the symptoms in the evening after the work, by surprise, maybe the dosage just a little big bigger, from a little less of a distance from your eyes etc. (I'm talking about your "I've done this... a few times before... messed a lot... it has never given me anything remotely similar...", because in welding people usually can regularly catch glimpses of welding without a mask and nothing happens, and then one time BOOM and it happens, when seemingly they caught not more said glimpses as usual, but evidently it was a little more/more intense/from a closer distance, but it usually feels just like "what the heck, I don't remember to catch flashes more than usual!") Also, as people mentioned, some byproducts could have different wavelength/intensity of a light flash, after certain brightness visible (although not UV itself, but indicating of a proportional UV dose emitted at the same time) light intensity reaches it's peak and our eye can no longer tell apart exactly how bright it is.
@@Pootie_Tang I spoke with a medical professional about it, and they agreed this probably was not photokeratitis. My symptoms did completely go away after I had my eyes rinsed at the ER, so it was most likely from chemical exposure and not UV light. A sub-gram pile of magnesium burning for less than five seconds just isn't enough to give you "arc flash", even if it's putting off an unnatural amount of UVC. And many other chemists have confirmed that certain chemicals have delayed onset of eye irritation (I think it was either Chemiolis or That Chemist I spoke to who went through something similar).
@@LabCoatz_Science I saw a lot of those comments, so I had to share my experience. The UV theory just didn't seem right to me at all especially since it went away after your eyes were washed out, and my experience was so similar to what you described.
Your eye troubles with the lithium aluminum hydride, and the weird color, was probably forming lithium tetrachloroaluminate, it's got that sorta greenish/yellowish tint to the pure dry form but also decays into a lotta nasty stuff on contact with moisture or flames, and the fumes of a LOT of the more volatile lithium compounds are not fun to get in your eyes and love to cause that lingering sandpaper-eyelid feeling - I speak from experience working with lithium salts on a daily basis. If I were you I'd get a full-face respirator and a spectacle kit instead of the halfmask, cause halfmask and goggles just don't cut it with a lotta things.
I think this is more likely. He's mentioned that he's burnt magnesium before (and a lot more of it) and he's never experienced that arc flash-like feeling. Not to say that it can't happen, but I think it's more likely to do with the reaction with lithium aluminium hydride.
@@samp1312 | EDIT | I say this as someone who's had a similar issue (not nearly hospital worthy, but still, a delayed irritation issue) with regular old capsaicin from dried, home made extra-fine cayenne pepper dust: | EDIT ENDS | Just speculation here, but there's a good chance that microparticulate solids of lithium tetrachloroaluminate (AlCl4Li) formed and deposited on the outside of his eyelids. That area (according to my optometrist) tries to constantly provide a thin layer of skin oil to prevent the skin from sticking to itself each time you open your eyes. (Side note: Not only does it like to trap dust and other particulates, but getting in your eyes just before putting your contacts in is quite unpleasant. Even the fresh, particulate-free oil secreted right after a shower to replace what you rinsed off isn't supposed to be there, and your eyes won't appreciate it.) If you're working with chemicals/dusts or anything that can produce microparticles capable of floating in the air, that dust can settle on the skin of your eyelids, and later be introduced into your eyes by rubbing them or any other vehicle for transporting particles/oils down into your eyes like a little sweat or that little bit of water left over after you bathe that the towel doesn't quite catch. So: I assume the AlCl4Li particles got rubbed into his eyes later that night, and adhered to the inside of his eyelids thanks to the moist environment and the grippy/rubber-like nature of the tissue. (For an easy visualization of how this works on a larger scale, take a bar of soap and a handful of sand. Wash your hands while holding the soap bar for a good few minutes or take a shower using that bar of soap, the goal is to get it nice and moist and soften it up a bit. Now grab that handful of sand, and press it into the soap, then try to wash the sand out. Most of the sand will wash away, but a nice thick layer will get stuck in the surface of the soap and will last a HECK of a long time before it dislodges. Seriously, with a fresh bar of soap just for this experiment, there'll be a noticeably gritty sandpaper texture for a good quarter of the soap bar's lifespan. The AlCl4Li particles likely did the same, getting stuck on the palpebral conjunctiva, which is the inside of the eyelid that covers the cornea.) Anyway. My assumption on how it played out is that once the AlCl4Li particles were introduced, he began to feel the irritation. And with repeated blinking effectively acting like sandpaper across an ever-more-sanded cornea accumulating micro-scratches, the pain starts out as a mild pain and rapidly reaches the point of being EXTREMELY painful. It hurts just to think about how bad it must have felt to have accumulating abrasive damage on a VERY delicate area made all the more sensitive by being essentially sandpapered by your own eyelids.
Maybe you were exposed to too much UV light from the experiments like the one with burning magnesium, and developed photokeratitis (arc eye). I think if it was chemical transfer, water and saline would have eased the pain, but it got worse instead. This is compatible with the characteristic "sand in your eyes" sensation and eye watering, that really only goes away with time. For some people it takes minutes of staring into a UV source to get this condition, but factors like how dilated your pupils are can make you more sensitive. But i guess it's possible there is some delayed onset chemical stuff going on
@@MightyRudeGoogle didn't have a clear answer, such as the average intensity of a welding flash, and how much UV 400 (total uv filtering rated for sunlight) is effective against that. However, a welding flash is brighter than the sun on a clear and dry day, so it's very unlikely that normal prescription glasses are sufficient protection.
These kids and their lack of respect for chemicals..... I've worked in industry (fine, chem, agrichem, pharma) for over 20 years.... I am still here because I respect the danger. I've done large (2000 gallon) reactions with POCl3 and nothing bad happened. Why? Because I was aware. HE does all this with out a fumehood.... gah
I made a bunch of organophosphates in my time, and most of them are fine. I will say, dealing with organophosphorus chemistry, phosphorus trichloride is a nasty one. Many synthesis have a habit of using pcl3 in large excess and having you rotavap off the excess. I might have inhaled a bit more than was safe but really felt like shit after the reaction.
It was one of the ignitions but not the magnesium. Something that had low/moderate brightness in the visible spectrum but extremely bright in UV or IR. Of course, because you couldn't see the light in that range you didn't realize.
The injury to your eye seems very similar to UV eye injury (also known as flash burn), including the symptoms you described and the delay in onset. It could have been caused by one of the ignition experiments you conducted, most likely the magnesium powder.
So I couldn't find anything for LiAlH4, but there is a paper called "Preparation and Luminescent Characteristics of UV-C Emitting ZnAl2O4 Phosphor for Sterilization Device" where they poked it with an electron beam and got some UVC emission. But I'd agree, the magnesium was likely the culprit here.
I don't believe it was, since I've handled far more intense magnesium flashes before (and more of them in a row or over a longer period of time), and never had photokeratitis from it. My chlorosulfonic and nitric acid videos actually both had similar tests, and I was fine afterward (ironically, the chlorosulfonic acid video also had me dealing with POCl3)!
@LabCoatz_Science some safety goggles have UV protection, some don't. I wouldn't rule out magnesium burning. I'm a welder and i have had very minor changes in environment drastically change the amount of UV I'd be accidentally exposed to, like the surface a light is reflecting off of, "clear" safety goggles or even direction of exposure
Arc eye just feels like chlorinated poolwater in your eye, not sandpaper. Source: The guy who taught me how to weld didn't also tell me to wear goggles while he was training me. Not a good teacher.
One trick to having a water free aparature is to prepare the setup for it first and then put the glassware you are using into an oven at little over 100°C to dry it up and the quickly assemble while hot.
I don't know much about chemistry, but I work with eyes in a regional hospital, the sensation of sandpaper when moving your eyes with eyelids closed is usually due to an inflammation in the papillar surface. Can be caused by disruption of the proportion of fluid components;, salts, proteins, lipids.. chemists will know better what of this it is. Best of luck.
@@silaskuemmerle2505 I'm 3 months late, but Arc Flash doesn't feel like sandpaper. It feels like you held your eyes open in a really chlorinated pool. They just kinda feel dry and burn a lot when you close your eyes. I used to run an insanely high wattage and voltage plasma cutting CNC machine that could slice 1 inch thick GR50/60 steel plates in half in under 3 seconds, and that is producing nearly pure plasma arcs to do so. It doesn't feel great to have arc flash but it doesnt feel like sandpaper. Like another commenter said and I kind of agree, this sounds a LOT like exposure to gaseous Lithium.
I've had a shower activate/release chemicals in my fingers and cause burning (or whatever I touched to burn) a few times. Your outer layer of dead skin on your fingers is a good absorber of some chemicals (especially oils). Locked up in the dry skin they do almost nothing. Then later when you shower, your skin gets moist, puffs up a bit, releasing the oils and contaminating anything you touch.
this 💯should be a pinned comment. similar injuries happened to the poor souls at that cringe crypto party where they used unfiltered UV biocide lamps as a black light on the dancefloor and everyone suffered corneal burns.
I don't believe so, since I've handled far more intense magnesium flashes before (and more of them in a row or over a longer period of time), and never had photokeratitis from it. My chlorosulfonic and nitric acid videos actually both had similar tests, and I was fine afterward (ironically, the chlorosulfonic acid video also had me dealing with POCl3)!was
Exposure to anything that damages the outer layer of your eye will give you the sandpaper feeling. Yeah it could be from UV, but personally when I got UV burnt that bad the sensitivity to light was the biggest pain, which you didn't mention. And I also highly doubt it was the magnesium. So yeah like you said maybe some vapour singed the outer layer of your eye or something, not enough to eat through anything but enough to cause a bit of surface damage.
you did make a biproduct that you did not identify at 9:30 and then ignited it multiple times. could that biproduct be the answer and it just took a bit to work through the mucus of the eye before it started being noticable.
I have a lot of respect for POCl3. I used it a fair few times in my undergrad career to synthesise pyrazoles from aryl ketones in my research projects. I have even distilled it before to purify it. It's some scary stuff, and I'd be terrified if my eyes had the fate of yours. Great video, please be careful next time though (although I'm sure you will)
Praying for your health and safety. I'm sorry this happened to you. Thank you for posting this and sharing it with us, you've undoubtably saved many others through this video. I have found that sometimes when we burn the skin near our eyes, it doesnt hurt right away and it takes a while till we really feel it. You may flush it out but the pain is still there for a while.
I performed a couple of reactions with molten salts in steel containers and threads always fail. The best way is to weld a bottom to the pipe, but that welding has to be done as well as possible otherwise salts will leak through any tiny crack. About the eye irritation, it really resembles how phosgene attacks the lungs after a few hours delay. Who knows, maybe it was caused by some byproduct, not the phosphoryl trichloride.
Since we don't know how it happened I'd argue there's not much we can learn here except be extra careful, which should be the default when dealing with dangerous substances.
last video accidentally weighing out 10x more of a potent untested chemical to injest, this video you're in the hospital with eye tentacles. You've just earned yourself the nickname Donny Don't. In seriously tho I love your work and glad you're ok pls stay safe.
PLEASE MAKE A SECOND CHANNEL CALLED LABNOPEZ talking about all of the things that you shouldn’t do in chemistry, and maybe demonstrating some of them for safety purposes!
my guess is that when the plate shattered, it launched micro shrapnel everywhere and one thing led to another, maybe it was in your hair, didn't rinse out completely, dried on your head, and worked its way into your eyes
Your nose and eyes are connected via tearducts, if a chemical is the cause of irritation then the nose and throat would become irritated as the chemical gets flushed out of the eyes. He says "I've burned more magnesium for longer without protection and haven't had this issue before", the problem with UV light is that it's radiation, it follows the inverse square law. If you are "one unit" away from a source and you move one more unit away, you double the distance but quarter the exposure, move one more unit away and you're three times further away but only getting one ninth the exposure (distance=1, exposure is 1/1, distance=2, exposure is 1/(2x2), distance=3, exposure is 1/(3x3), etc...) Simply leaning in a little closer, maybe not blinking at the right moment because you're expecting the flash, can be the difference between a radiation injury you recover from without incident and sunburn on your cornea.
Once was destilling quite a bit of the stuff for a reaction. Even tho it was in good fumehood, oh boy... I could smell it like for a week after that very strongly, not enjoying food and having problems breathing at night. Since then, I kinda get nauseous only seeing the structure. Good prep btw.
Delayed effects are so nasty. Sometimes they can appear even something like a day or two later like IIRC can happen with glacial acetic acid and formic acid in lungs.
On the rare occasion I'm up that late working, the same thing can happen to my eyes, I've deduced it's a combination of eye strain and skin oils getting into my eyes. Rubbing my eyes introduces more oils making it worse. Working with the chemicals previously that day might have made you more worried about the symptoms. Even when I try to wash my eyes and face it still doesn't help a whole lot and it feels a lot like you described.
considering the clip of phosphoryl chloride and how clear it is, i believe your homemade chloride had some sort of impurities in it. despite the lesser volume, it was tinged yellow and less reactive than the sample clip. most likely, like you claimed, you needed an inert atmosphere, and slight water contamination lead to poisonous byproducts
Was it the burning magnesium? Whenever i burned it and apparently also while welding it felt like there were pins and needles in my eyes and if it was bad enough it also felt like i had sandpaper eyelids
I don't believe it was, since I've handled far more intense magnesium flashes before (and more of them in a row or over a longer period of time), and never had photokeratitis from it. My chlorosulfonic and nitric acid videos actually both had similar tests, and I was fine afterward (ironically, the chlorosulfonic acid video also had me dealing with POCl3)!
@@LabCoatz_Science As others have suggested, the yellow sludge created, then combusted may have had strong UVC light emitted outside of the visible spectrum. Since you mentioned yourself you're not exactly sure what compound was created, that seems like the most likely explanation to me. Only one way to find out, recreate the experiment and measure the wavelength of the reaction output. (you may not have the funds for such a measurement device as they're really quite expensive, maybe reach out to another chemtuber that does have access to such a device, or nick one from the nearest physics lab )😈
Your symptoms sound a lot like exposure to UV light, i.e. it started later that night, you felt like sand was in your eyes, and washing didn't help. Perhaps the burning magnesium with extra brightness from the POCl3 released more UV light than you are used to. Even a normal Mg fire can damage your eyes.
Seems to be a known thing, that the symptoms of phosphorus oxychloride exposure can be delayed. I do remember that, due to steric hindrance, the reaction with alcohols is slow unless a nucleophile catalyst is used (pyridine is good for pocl3). That really sucks. I might have been a bit gung ho in the lab but I wouldn't screw around at home tbh.
This sounds exactly like welders flash like everyone else said before. I've had the same symptoms after looking for a split second in a stick welding arc. Best thing to do is cry yourself to sleep. Perhaps that burning magnesium reaction with POCl3 produced a different wavelength of light (UV, infrared) differing from other past experiments? What about the burning lithium aluminum hydride? I'm no scientist....not yet at least lol
Just be glad you didn't have to get any injections in your eye. I have had to get one every 2 months or so for the past 5 years along with getting to look directly at a green laser 4 times trying to fix an injury to one of my eyes.
Very much think this is Welder's Eye, I got it once back when I was learning to weld at 16 and this is exactly what it's like, except I fell asleep and then woke up in horrible pain. I don't know which is worse honestly...
Your symptoms are exactly how I described my experience with flash burns from UV exposure. Maybe something burning in this released more UV light than was apparent? In my case I basically had no symptoms until I finally messed up and got over some arbitrary threshold, then it happened hours later when I tried to sleep. I didn't seek medical attention, but it was eventually fine.
I learned enough about chemistry to know that I know nothing about chemistry, which put an end to my lab coat explorations before I had a permanently detrimental event only one step beyond where you ended up after this dramatic adventure. Be safe.
The green stuff looks like AlCl3, if it -reacts with moisture- is contaminated with FeCl3. At Uni, older aluminium chloride reagents always looked like that
Sounds like you flash burned your eyes. I have had it happen when exposed to welding or plasma cutting without at least shade 5 glasses. It feels just like you described. You wake up in the middle of of the night and it feels like you have sand under your eye lids and the more your eyes water the more painful it gets. I have just had to deal with it and it’s usually gone by the morning. I wonder if you got flashed by the magnesium or other combustions of this experiment.
I'm doubling my comment here, so maybe some people will find it useful: As a welder, I can confirm, that your symptoms are exactly the same as the ones caused by harsh UV exposure. Starting not right away, massive tearing, feeling of sandpaper that grows over several hours to a degree when it's unbearable. In this case any antibacterial eye drops with anti-inflammatory effect would work (pretty much all of them). I'm not saying that is what necessarily happened to you, just saying that the symptoms you described are pretty much identical. Also in welding it's also like that, from time to time, when people around you weld and not every time you are quick enough to close your eyes, most of the times nothing happens, but rarely, suddenly it causes the symptoms in the evening after the work, by surprise, maybe the dosage just a little big bigger, from a little less of a distance from your eyes etc. (I'm talking about your "I've done this... a few times before... messed a lot... it has never given me anything remotely similar...", because in welding people usually can regularly catch glimpses of welding without a mask and nothing happens, and then one time BOOM and it happens, when seemingly they caught not more said glimpses as usual, but evidently it was a little more/more intense/from a closer distance, but it usually feels just like "what the heck, I don't remember to catch flashes more than usual!")
Welder fabricator here, you have yourself flash burn. The sandpaper description is all I had to hear. Can happen welding, or looking at the sun, or magnesium related things. I’ve seen people get it from magnum flashers on the 4th which are primarily magnesium based I believe. You made the right call going and flushing em out given it was unknown at the time but my $ is on flash burn or as some call it arc burn.
I think it's entirely possible you did get welder's eye. Your description of the symptoms is pretty much spot on for that. It won't necessarily happen for every bright flash that hits your eye. Unless you spend 12 hours a day, 6 days a week staring right at a strong UVC source-like, say, a welder-saying that those flashes didn't affect you doesn't mean a whole lot. There's also the fact that you were burning magnesium _and_ phosphoryl chloride. Maybe the two reacted in a way that created a much stronger UVC output. Or maybe when it was mixed with any of the other compounds and burned. ...or maybe it had nothing to do with any of that. Idunno, I'm not a biographist. Point being, more research needs to be done before ruling it out. Don't mean to give you grief or nothing; just putting it out there.
Not true. It only takes a few seconds of direct unshaded exposure to a welding arc to flash burn your eyes. Distance is your friend in this situation because of the inverse square law.
9:33 Maybe that’s some sort of AlCl3 (aluminum trichloride) or AlClO (aluminum oxychloride) adduct with Phosphine. If the LiAlH4 can first perform successive nucleophilic substitutions to first dechlorinate the phosphorus and then deoxygenate it, the byproducts would be aluminum oxychloride, lithium chloride, HCl, and phosphine. Since aluminum oxide is so stable, the oxychloride would thermodynamically disproportionate and release the powerful lewis acid of AlCl3 to bind with the newly formed phosphine.
Nice video! This seems to be the same thing that happens to welders that dont use a mask or other people working close to a welder withought wearing eye protection. The symptoms are the same, it starts watering your eyes after a few hours and then you feel like there is sand between your eyelids. Very painful. Hope you are doing well now.
I have to agree with the flash burn theory. I spent 45 years as a welder and your symptoms sound exactly like flash burnt eyes. Nothing but time helps, and it can be cumulative, where a second exposure might only need to be partly as bad to produce symptoms. The only thing I ever found to help the pain was using slices of raw potato on my eyes with a damp cloth and rest. For some reason, the potato seems to pull the heat from you eyes and it reduces the pain. Go figure. My guess is something was different in your magnesium and it made harder uv than you expected for some reason. Maybe different chemical formula?
Hi mate, this aligns with my experience of handling large quantities of dehydrating agents. The water reactivity of phosphoryl chloride and phosphorus pentachloride are such that you dry out and irritate your skin and mucous membranes. The dry acid formed qualitatively feels very different to 'wet' acid. When I worked with POCl/P2O5 I would always use a full face respirator in a ventilated space but often had irritated hands (under double gloves!) from the behaviour documented above. It's not well documented behaviour because you need to be working in either a badly ventilated space and working on the 10s of kilograms+ scale.
Sounds like UV induced cornea damage, maybe something that you burnt together with the magnesium produced a significan amount of UVC. Welding, arc furnaces or anything with enough energy plasma emits a lot of high energy uv it doesnt directly burn you but it harms your cells. effects will not show up immediately but when they are about to regenerate. like a sun burn, its coming usually hours later. maybe not a bad idea to strap some uv filters (basically just plain glass) onto your lab goggles. uvc will pass trough quartz glass tho
There's a lot of comments suggesting it might be welder's eye (photokeratitis) from the burning Mg. From some inexperienced experience with some carbon arc lamp experiments as a teenager, I can personally confirm that the description matches photokeratitis pretty closely - especially the delay before symptom onset, although I do see a few problems with this hypothesis; - Both polycarbonate and PMMA (plexiglass) used in safety glasses block pretty much all UV shorter than about 400nm (Most UV A, and all UV B and C), even regular glass blocks most shorter wave UV, so this doesn't seem likely. - Unless the addition of POCl3 drastically increased the temperature and changed the emission spectrum/intensity, I wouldn't expect that small of a quantity of Mg burning for such a short duration to cause welder's eye? I'm not sure if it's still done nowadays, but back in the 90s, almost every high school chemistry teacher I had loved showing off burning wads of magnesium ribbon, which we looked at at fairly close range without eye protection and never showed symptoms. Then there's early photography "flash cubes", which had very fine magnesium wool in a bulb full of pure oxygen (Technology Connections has a good video about them), which would've burned much hotter than Mg in air, but didn't cause people any eye problems as far as I know (although they may have incorporated UV blocking materials I guess). This has got me curious - I'm about to go down a rabbit hole researching this, would be keen to hear other's input!
Polycarbonate safety glasses on their own is not enough protection to protect from arc flash. There's a reason they sell Welder specific shades. The sheer amount of UV given off means if even a small amount gets through that's all she wrote. His symptoms are so typical for arc flash I can't imagine what else it could be.
@@Setixir I agree, polycarbonate wouldn't be at all suitable for something like arc welding, but that's looking directly at a sustained plasma at close proximity for minutes or hours. Welding goggles also have to attenuate visible light, and protect from infrared as well (which can "cook" the cornea and vitreous humor from heating). This was a brief flash from burning magnesium, and having personally (along with classmates) looked at burning magnesium for several seconds on multiple occasions without any symptoms of welder's eye, I still suspect it was more likely caused chemically. There are plenty of cases where chemical burns/injury can occur with symptoms only appearing hours or days later (HF and mustard gas come to mind as examples).
As a medic, and later a RN, I have inserted many morgan lenses. Whatever incident brought the person in, after flushing with morgan lenses, they rarely do that thing again...
Do you think the light from the magnesium burning could've been different when introduced to this chemical? I'm not that knowledgeable about this stuff but it's something to consider
Brother gave himself chemical arc eyes😅 thank goodness you are okay dude. It reminded me of an old Discovery Channel tv show where they did the "worst" jobs possible. There was one episode where the host goes to work at a fireworks facility and the owner (who worked with him) warned him that one of the chemicals they were working with (i think it was dextrose? It was a long time ago) will make his eyes really uncomfortable when he gets to bed and to just let his eyes water away. Cheers!
My best very uneducated guess would be since the burning did not start till after the shower that during one of the more violent reactions a small amount of some byproduct or unreacted chemical was launched and landed in your hair. Then washed into or around your eyes during the shower. Just a guess though!
Is not lithium aluminum hydride a monitored chemical-due to its use in synthesis of many controlled substances? Which uncontrolled (inactive) analog of desoxyephedrine are you looking at creating?
It wasn't the magnesium that nerfed your eyeballs. This vapors form acids upon contact with the Alveoli, which are a mucus membrane. The conjunctiva of your eyes is also a mucus membrane. Either the fumes reacted upon contact with your eyes, or a byproduct of the reactivity tests did it.
Please build a fume hood since you'll be doing similar future projects that might affect you in the long term. And thanks for sharing not just the video but the mistakes and the thought process behind it, be safe.
As a welder, sounds similar to welding flash burns (with your eyes) just wondering if looking at the reactions of the magnesium etc might have caused something similar?
2:30 my homemade heating mantle which uses a standard Chinese 1L RBF heating element (costing around 10€/$) goes up to close to 500°C so yeah, this temperature is not very difficult to reach for amateurs. The reaction can't be done in glassware? 5:00 ah ok, the answer seems to be yes it can...
I can't believe TH-cam demonitized this because you put in a warning about how the chemical is dangerous. Seriously TH-cam, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Last but not Least , MASK YOU USIN IS FOR CAR PAINTS ( Paint Liquid Molecules Stick to Filter ) , NEXT TIME YOU BURN/EVAPORISE STUFF , USE GAS MASK " MP-4 " AND/OR " MG -2 " " PG -1 " " FM 12" ❤
I helped a guy do a whole mess of welding one day many long years ago - without proper eye protection - the eye problem you describe sounds very similar to mine...they called it "weld flash" from looking at the bright aura while the dude was welding
In my experience flushing your eyes with water can make them irritated, even though it may remove the contaminant, it has a different osmolarity than your eye requires
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I've read some of the comments, and no, my condition was definitely not caused by the light from magnesium burning. Remember, these symptoms don't ONLY point to ocular UV exposure. I've done this magnesium test in a few of my videos before, including my nitric acid and chlorosulfonic superacid videos, and I've messed with it a lot more outside of my videos as either ribbon or flash powder, and it has never given me any issues. And, most tellingly, the symptoms went away after the doctor rinsed my eyes out, which points STRONGLY to this being chemical irritation.
What's that? Some of you STILL don't believe me or the doctors? Well then, let me put some numbers behind what I'm saying, to prove my point: let's say I burned 100mg of magnesium (it was probably closer to 75mg, based on similarly-sized piles I've actually measured). A university tested the UV output of a jet of air-dispersed magnesium powder in a 2" graphite pipe, and the highest instantaneous (non-sustained) flux they reached was 1500 W/m2 with a magnesium mass flux of 1.8 grams per second. Using the inverse square law, this correlates to a UV density of only 1.5 J/m2 for 1.8 grams of magnesium at 0.8 meters (about the distance of my face from the magnesium, before I moved even further away as it burned)...but wait! That was for 1.8 grams of magnesium! I used at most 100mg...so my flux would be at most 0.08 J/m2. According to a 2010 study, you need 0.12 J/m2 to suffer from photokeratitis. You could argue that UV reflected off surfaces or got intensified by using POCl3, but really, you'd be grasping for straws at that point, considering I did move further away as it burned AND used less than 100mg. Final verdict: no photokeratitis.
Also, I know it might seem like I'm being rather casual about almost blinding myself (like I was when I accidentally overdosed on super-caffeine in the last video). That is just my personality and communication style: I'm not exactly the most dramatic person. I recognize the gravity of my mistakes, and the horrific outcomes that could've transpired. I want these videos to serve as reminders to be safe, and show that I'm not infallible. Mistakes can be made, and hopefully this will be the last serious mistake I make in one of my videos!
It would be worth checking for other factors that may have caused the injury. During incident investigations, it is easy to get hung up on the obvious factors and miss something else.
Yes and No.
Yes, that probably is not from the magnesium burning.
No, i don't think, that it's not from burning some stuff.
The photokeratitis could be caused by the weird side product, which burned in 9:38. Also not from the light which got emitted in the visible range, rather UV-light, since you didn't burn much of it. The symptoms you described reminded me of working in a steel manufacturer where things got welded together. I only looked once for only a brief moment directly into the blue light which emitted by welding. And i had similar symptoms as you, although i didn't need to go to ER. But the feel of moving my eyes against sandpaper is so unique that you only can understand the uncomfort when you personally had contact with that topic.
You mentioned that you saw more intense magnesium flashes. But the wavelength of light and intensity are not necessarily coupled. A weaker flash but with more UV could do more damage than a more intense flash.
And isn't burning magnesium pretty much black-body light so not likely to produce significant UVC?
High culture SKIBIDI represent 🤙
This is why you always have a friend wash you in the shower.
this can apply in any shower
Get over here and soap me up!
This seems logical, why didn't I think of it
@@ДАРТАНЬЯН-з2щ you have a black hole?
@@ДАРТАНЬЯН-з2щ you good?
The symptoms and their delayed onset, combined with the fact you were thorough/cautious with the hand washing/shower afterwards (and before symptom onset), really makes me suspect UVC flash burn from looking at the magnesium burn experiment without eye protection. Just because you've burned magnesium, or other stuff in conjunction with magnesium, and had no ill effects (gotten lucky) before doesn't mean you can rule it out this time.
Exactly what I was thinking. I haven't gotten my eyes sunburnt before, but the ppl I know that have, described identical symptoms. A friend similarly did burn his retinas from welding (auto dimmer malfunctioned), and I got a gnarly sunburn on my face after 30 total seconds of exposure.
Electrical arcs and burning metal are no joke.
Had the exact same symptoms after not wearing eye protection while watching a friend of mine weld something. Didn't even look straight into it, but I also got sunburn on my face from just these 20min or so.
Yes. I worked in a grow room for a day and ended up in the hospital later that night for sunburnt eyes. Felt exactly how he described it.
Mystery not solved it seems
EDIT: "not" xD
@@engineer0239 Little tip for you, if you're not welding but working around people that are - wear a normal pair of plastic safety glasses, they block out 99% of the UV spectrum that gives you arc-eye.
I have a similar story to yours. A couple years ago I was sealing PCl5 in ampoules to protect it for long term storage. I had 50g, so I sealed it in five ampoules made from test tubes containing 10g each. I wore a respirator, but wasn’t wearing goggles. I thought using my M40A1 gas mask was overkill, and the goggles didn’t fit with the respirator on. I mistakenly thought it wouldn’t be an issue because the area was extremely well ventilated. Turns out I should have wore the gas mask. After the ampoules were made, I washed up, and tried to go to sleep. As soon as I shut my eyes I noticed a strong burning sensation accompanied by profuse tearing. This mostly went away when my eyes were open. I realized this was probably caused by PCl5 vapor, so I promptly washed my eyes out. It took two attempts. After rinsing them for about 20 minutes the burning, and tearing stopped completely.
Lesson learned: always protect your eyes even if it requires the use of a bulky, uncomfortable gas mask. You can never be too careful. Try to build a decent fume hood, be extremely cautious with these types of phosphorus compounds. They really are quite nasty.
I'm starting to think the common factor here is PCl3: it's volatile, it forms when PCl5 is heated (which could happen if you're ampouling samples), and it was also formed when I tried distilling in the steel retort. Plus, it's also WAY more toxic (similar to cyanide actually), which, combined with its chlorinating properties, make it a much better candidate for this kind of injury.
I think I'll pin this comment to show that my related experience wasn't just a fluke...right now, most people seem to be under the impression that I developed photokeratitis from the magnesium flash, which doesn't seem right to me, given how many times I've looked at much larger magnesium fires without injury.
Not completely related as no chemicals are involved, but these are also the same symptoms of arc burn. Though I doubt welding was taking place. It is just interesting to see that different causes can have the same symptoms, the feeling of sand paper when you close your eyes is really not a forgettable experience.
@@LabCoatz_Science It's too bad you unpinned your other comment with a lot of people telling you that it was most likely due to UV burn.
Seems like confirmation bias
Burning is not sharp "sandpaper" type of pain, and also yours did not go away after rinsing for 20 minutes. I'll copy my comment once again, it may be not useful to you, maybe it will be useful to others reading it under the pinned comment:
As a welder, I can confirm, that your symptoms are exactly the same as the ones caused by harsh UV exposure. Starting not right away, massive tearing, feeling of sandpaper that grows over several hours to a degree when it's unbearable. In this case any antibacterial eye drops with anti-inflammatory effect would work (pretty much all of them). I'm not saying that is what necessarily happened to you, just saying that the symptoms you described are pretty much identical.
Also in welding it's also like that, from time to time, when people around you weld and not every time you are quick enough to close your eyes, most of the times nothing happens, but rarely, suddenly it causes the symptoms in the evening after the work, by surprise, maybe the dosage just a little big bigger, from a little less of a distance from your eyes etc. (I'm talking about your "I've done this... a few times before... messed a lot... it has never given me anything remotely similar...", because in welding people usually can regularly catch glimpses of welding without a mask and nothing happens, and then one time BOOM and it happens, when seemingly they caught not more said glimpses as usual, but evidently it was a little more/more intense/from a closer distance, but it usually feels just like "what the heck, I don't remember to catch flashes more than usual!")
Also, as people mentioned, some byproducts could have different wavelength/intensity of a light flash, after certain brightness visible (although not UV itself, but indicating of a proportional UV dose emitted at the same time) light intensity reaches it's peak and our eye can no longer tell apart exactly how bright it is.
@@Pootie_Tang I spoke with a medical professional about it, and they agreed this probably was not photokeratitis. My symptoms did completely go away after I had my eyes rinsed at the ER, so it was most likely from chemical exposure and not UV light. A sub-gram pile of magnesium burning for less than five seconds just isn't enough to give you "arc flash", even if it's putting off an unnatural amount of UVC. And many other chemists have confirmed that certain chemicals have delayed onset of eye irritation (I think it was either Chemiolis or That Chemist I spoke to who went through something similar).
@@LabCoatz_Science I saw a lot of those comments, so I had to share my experience. The UV theory just didn't seem right to me at all especially since it went away after your eyes were washed out, and my experience was so similar to what you described.
alternative title: Synthesizing and drinking SNAILIC ACID to turn myself into a SNAIL
Based
Does that imply there is a polyatomic named snail?
An everyday occurrence in the Caves of Qud
@@kreeeprrthehut6327 yeah its a benzene ring with an alkyl chain that loops around it a couple of times like a snail shell
Now I'm just confused, lol
Your eye troubles with the lithium aluminum hydride, and the weird color, was probably forming lithium tetrachloroaluminate, it's got that sorta greenish/yellowish tint to the pure dry form but also decays into a lotta nasty stuff on contact with moisture or flames, and the fumes of a LOT of the more volatile lithium compounds are not fun to get in your eyes and love to cause that lingering sandpaper-eyelid feeling - I speak from experience working with lithium salts on a daily basis. If I were you I'd get a full-face respirator and a spectacle kit instead of the halfmask, cause halfmask and goggles just don't cut it with a lotta things.
So you think it’s plausible it could have given a delayed reaction as well?
I think this is more likely. He's mentioned that he's burnt magnesium before (and a lot more of it) and he's never experienced that arc flash-like feeling. Not to say that it can't happen, but I think it's more likely to do with the reaction with lithium aluminium hydride.
@@samp1312
| EDIT |
I say this as someone who's had a similar issue (not nearly hospital worthy, but still, a delayed irritation issue) with regular old capsaicin from dried, home made extra-fine cayenne pepper dust:
| EDIT ENDS |
Just speculation here, but there's a good chance that microparticulate solids of lithium tetrachloroaluminate (AlCl4Li) formed and deposited on the outside of his eyelids.
That area (according to my optometrist) tries to constantly provide a thin layer of skin oil to prevent the skin from sticking to itself each time you open your eyes. (Side note: Not only does it like to trap dust and other particulates, but getting in your eyes just before putting your contacts in is quite unpleasant. Even the fresh, particulate-free oil secreted right after a shower to replace what you rinsed off isn't supposed to be there, and your eyes won't appreciate it.)
If you're working with chemicals/dusts or anything that can produce microparticles capable of floating in the air, that dust can settle on the skin of your eyelids, and later be introduced into your eyes by rubbing them or any other vehicle for transporting particles/oils down into your eyes like a little sweat or that little bit of water left over after you bathe that the towel doesn't quite catch.
So:
I assume the AlCl4Li particles got rubbed into his eyes later that night, and adhered to the inside of his eyelids thanks to the moist environment and the grippy/rubber-like nature of the tissue.
(For an easy visualization of how this works on a larger scale, take a bar of soap and a handful of sand. Wash your hands while holding the soap bar for a good few minutes or take a shower using that bar of soap, the goal is to get it nice and moist and soften it up a bit. Now grab that handful of sand, and press it into the soap, then try to wash the sand out. Most of the sand will wash away, but a nice thick layer will get stuck in the surface of the soap and will last a HECK of a long time before it dislodges. Seriously, with a fresh bar of soap just for this experiment, there'll be a noticeably gritty sandpaper texture for a good quarter of the soap bar's lifespan.
The AlCl4Li particles likely did the same, getting stuck on the palpebral conjunctiva, which is the inside of the eyelid that covers the cornea.)
Anyway.
My assumption on how it played out is that once the AlCl4Li particles were introduced, he began to feel the irritation.
And with repeated blinking effectively acting like sandpaper across an ever-more-sanded cornea accumulating micro-scratches, the pain starts out as a mild pain and rapidly reaches the point of being EXTREMELY painful.
It hurts just to think about how bad it must have felt to have accumulating abrasive damage on a VERY delicate area made all the more sensitive by being essentially sandpapered by your own eyelids.
Maybe you were exposed to too much UV light from the experiments like the one with burning magnesium, and developed photokeratitis (arc eye). I think if it was chemical transfer, water and saline would have eased the pain, but it got worse instead. This is compatible with the characteristic "sand in your eyes" sensation and eye watering, that really only goes away with time. For some people it takes minutes of staring into a UV source to get this condition, but factors like how dilated your pupils are can make you more sensitive. But i guess it's possible there is some delayed onset chemical stuff going on
His prescription glasses should protect his eyes against harmful UV light
Yeah this all sounds like welders flash
@@MightyRudenot all glasses have the UV coating I think.. At least for me, they asked me whether I wanted it
happened to me once on a beautiful morning flight down the east coast. :D
@@MightyRudeGoogle didn't have a clear answer, such as the average intensity of a welding flash, and how much UV 400 (total uv filtering rated for sunlight) is effective against that. However, a welding flash is brighter than the sun on a clear and dry day, so it's very unlikely that normal prescription glasses are sufficient protection.
kinda sounds like welder's flash but that would require UVC to be emitted from somewhere
Somewhere like a little magnesium fire perchance?
Don't say perchance @@EddieTheH
@@Randibaaj_sala perchance perchance.
@@Randibaaj_sala peradventure then
@@Randibaaj_sala technically, he didn't say it, he typed it...
"Extremely useful, turns alcohols into organophosphates!" -> Me running out the door screaming.
The way he says it so casually too. The next video is " Turning a Molsen in VX nerve agent"
Yeah, that one had me do a double take aswell.
These kids and their lack of respect for chemicals..... I've worked in industry (fine, chem, agrichem, pharma) for over 20 years.... I am still here because I respect the danger. I've done large (2000 gallon) reactions with POCl3 and nothing bad happened. Why? Because I was aware. HE does all this with out a fumehood.... gah
I made a bunch of organophosphates in my time, and most of them are fine.
I will say, dealing with organophosphorus chemistry, phosphorus trichloride is a nasty one. Many synthesis have a habit of using pcl3 in large excess and having you rotavap off the excess.
I might have inhaled a bit more than was safe but really felt like shit after the reaction.
Me not knowing what he is saying at all saying...ok that's sounds cool
It was one of the ignitions but not the magnesium. Something that had low/moderate brightness in the visible spectrum but extremely bright in UV or IR. Of course, because you couldn't see the light in that range you didn't realize.
I agree sounds like arc blindness, you get it from welding without protection feels like sand in your eyes
The injury to your eye seems very similar to UV eye injury (also known as flash burn), including the symptoms you described and the delay in onset. It could have been caused by one of the ignition experiments you conducted, most likely the magnesium powder.
So I couldn't find anything for LiAlH4, but there is a paper called "Preparation and Luminescent Characteristics of UV-C Emitting
ZnAl2O4 Phosphor for Sterilization Device" where they poked it with an electron beam and got some UVC emission.
But I'd agree, the magnesium was likely the culprit here.
This def sounds like UV damage to me, likely was that enhanced magnesium burn test.
I don't believe it was, since I've handled far more intense magnesium flashes before (and more of them in a row or over a longer period of time), and never had photokeratitis from it. My chlorosulfonic and nitric acid videos actually both had similar tests, and I was fine afterward (ironically, the chlorosulfonic acid video also had me dealing with POCl3)!
@@LabCoatz_ScienceDid you wear goggles for the magnesium flash? They usually have some protection against UV. So that might rule out UV hypothesis.
@LabCoatz_Science some safety goggles have UV protection, some don't. I wouldn't rule out magnesium burning. I'm a welder and i have had very minor changes in environment drastically change the amount of UV I'd be accidentally exposed to, like the surface a light is reflecting off of, "clear" safety goggles or even direction of exposure
Thats a super common welder injury for those that dont take precaution.
Arc eye just feels like chlorinated poolwater in your eye, not sandpaper. Source: The guy who taught me how to weld didn't also tell me to wear goggles while he was training me. Not a good teacher.
One trick to having a water free aparature is to prepare the setup for it first and then put the glassware you are using into an oven at little over 100°C to dry it up and the quickly assemble while hot.
I don't know much about chemistry, but I work with eyes in a regional hospital, the sensation of sandpaper when moving your eyes with eyelids closed is usually due to an inflammation in the papillar surface. Can be caused by disruption of the proportion of fluid components;, salts, proteins, lipids.. chemists will know better what of this it is. Best of luck.
Huh
I know a lot of welders who talk about nearly identical symptoms if they don't use their eye protection properly.
@@silaskuemmerle2505 I'm 3 months late, but Arc Flash doesn't feel like sandpaper. It feels like you held your eyes open in a really chlorinated pool. They just kinda feel dry and burn a lot when you close your eyes. I used to run an insanely high wattage and voltage plasma cutting CNC machine that could slice 1 inch thick GR50/60 steel plates in half in under 3 seconds, and that is producing nearly pure plasma arcs to do so. It doesn't feel great to have arc flash but it doesnt feel like sandpaper.
Like another commenter said and I kind of agree, this sounds a LOT like exposure to gaseous Lithium.
I've had a shower activate/release chemicals in my fingers and cause burning (or whatever I touched to burn) a few times. Your outer layer of dead skin on your fingers is a good absorber of some chemicals (especially oils). Locked up in the dry skin they do almost nothing. Then later when you shower, your skin gets moist, puffs up a bit, releasing the oils and contaminating anything you touch.
Is it possible you got a kind of welders flash from those sparks in some of those bright reactions?
That was my first thought, flash burns from the magnesium.
Yeah uv from the burning magnetism was my first thought. What he is describing sounds like classic welders eye.
I was wondering the same.
this 💯should be a pinned comment.
similar injuries happened to the poor souls at that cringe crypto party where they used unfiltered UV biocide lamps as a black light on the dancefloor and everyone suffered corneal burns.
I don't believe so, since I've handled far more intense magnesium flashes before (and more of them in a row or over a longer period of time), and never had photokeratitis from it. My chlorosulfonic and nitric acid videos actually both had similar tests, and I was fine afterward (ironically, the chlorosulfonic acid video also had me dealing with POCl3)!was
Exposure to anything that damages the outer layer of your eye will give you the sandpaper feeling. Yeah it could be from UV, but personally when I got UV burnt that bad the sensitivity to light was the biggest pain, which you didn't mention. And I also highly doubt it was the magnesium. So yeah like you said maybe some vapour singed the outer layer of your eye or something, not enough to eat through anything but enough to cause a bit of surface damage.
Kudos! I like it when youtube chemists have the humility to showcase when things don't go according to plan. Brave
you did make a biproduct that you did not identify at 9:30 and then ignited it multiple times. could that biproduct be the answer and it just took a bit to work through the mucus of the eye before it started being noticable.
I have a lot of respect for POCl3. I used it a fair few times in my undergrad career to synthesise pyrazoles from aryl ketones in my research projects. I have even distilled it before to purify it. It's some scary stuff, and I'd be terrified if my eyes had the fate of yours.
Great video, please be careful next time though (although I'm sure you will)
see. you have had an education in chemistry. He hasn't. He's a danger to himself:(
@@jamescollier3 let him cook
Praying for your health and safety. I'm sorry this happened to you. Thank you for posting this and sharing it with us, you've undoubtably saved many others through this video.
I have found that sometimes when we burn the skin near our eyes, it doesnt hurt right away and it takes a while till we really feel it. You may flush it out but the pain is still there for a while.
I performed a couple of reactions with molten salts in steel containers and threads always fail. The best way is to weld a bottom to the pipe, but that welding has to be done as well as possible otherwise salts will leak through any tiny crack.
About the eye irritation, it really resembles how phosgene attacks the lungs after a few hours delay. Who knows, maybe it was caused by some byproduct, not the phosphoryl trichloride.
Good lesson in safety!
Since we don't know how it happened I'd argue there's not much we can learn here except be extra careful, which should be the default when dealing with dangerous substances.
at 3 min, I realized this guy has no chem education, and he knows just enough to hurt or kill himself.... I'm thinking the title is not click bate
last video accidentally weighing out 10x more of a potent untested chemical to injest, this video you're in the hospital with eye tentacles. You've just earned yourself the nickname Donny Don't. In seriously tho I love your work and glad you're ok pls stay safe.
PLEASE MAKE A SECOND CHANNEL CALLED LABNOPEZ talking about all of the things that you shouldn’t do in chemistry, and maybe demonstrating some of them for safety purposes!
my guess is that when the plate shattered, it launched micro shrapnel everywhere and one thing led to another, maybe it was in your hair, didn't rinse out completely, dried on your head, and worked its way into your eyes
Your nose and eyes are connected via tearducts, if a chemical is the cause of irritation then the nose and throat would become irritated as the chemical gets flushed out of the eyes.
He says "I've burned more magnesium for longer without protection and haven't had this issue before", the problem with UV light is that it's radiation, it follows the inverse square law. If you are "one unit" away from a source and you move one more unit away, you double the distance but quarter the exposure, move one more unit away and you're three times further away but only getting one ninth the exposure (distance=1, exposure is 1/1, distance=2, exposure is 1/(2x2), distance=3, exposure is 1/(3x3), etc...)
Simply leaning in a little closer, maybe not blinking at the right moment because you're expecting the flash, can be the difference between a radiation injury you recover from without incident and sunburn on your cornea.
@@rorydakin8048 thank you chat gpt (no offense) i dont think it was light that did it but maybe i wasnt listening
One time I made a POCl3 Vilsmeyer triptan adduct which was ELECTRIC BARBIE PINK. Easily the most vibrant organic synthesis I've done.
Once was destilling quite a bit of the stuff for a reaction. Even tho it was in good fumehood, oh boy... I could smell it like for a week after that very strongly, not enjoying food and having problems breathing at night. Since then, I kinda get nauseous only seeing the structure. Good prep btw.
Seeing the Magic Bullet ttakes me back to the 2000s infomercial era
Just wanted to leave a comment to say I love your videos man
Delayed effects are so nasty. Sometimes they can appear even something like a day or two later like IIRC can happen with glacial acetic acid and formic acid in lungs.
Any chance one of the flame tests emitted a lot of UVC light?
I was also thinking the same thing, welders flash from some of those sparks.
Absolutely. Burning magnesium'll do that.
My thoughts too, sandpaper eyes is a common symptom
@@23Butanedione The long onset and persistence fits too.
Man that’s two scary videos in a row. Keep up the cool content but please stay safe!!!
On the rare occasion I'm up that late working, the same thing can happen to my eyes, I've deduced it's a combination of eye strain and skin oils getting into my eyes. Rubbing my eyes introduces more oils making it worse.
Working with the chemicals previously that day might have made you more worried about the symptoms. Even when I try to wash my eyes and face it still doesn't help a whole lot and it feels a lot like you described.
This video was demonitized, but they showed me a commercial in front of it. AND a minute and a half into it as well!
considering the clip of phosphoryl chloride and how clear it is, i believe your homemade chloride had some sort of impurities in it. despite the lesser volume, it was tinged yellow and less reactive than the sample clip. most likely, like you claimed, you needed an inert atmosphere, and slight water contamination lead to poisonous byproducts
Was it the burning magnesium? Whenever i burned it and apparently also while welding it felt like there were pins and needles in my eyes and if it was bad enough it also felt like i had sandpaper eyelids
I don't believe it was, since I've handled far more intense magnesium flashes before (and more of them in a row or over a longer period of time), and never had photokeratitis from it. My chlorosulfonic and nitric acid videos actually both had similar tests, and I was fine afterward (ironically, the chlorosulfonic acid video also had me dealing with POCl3)!
@@LabCoatz_Science wow yeah thats weird. Im out of ideas then
@@LabCoatz_Science As others have suggested, the yellow sludge created, then combusted may have had strong UVC light emitted outside of the visible spectrum. Since you mentioned yourself you're not exactly sure what compound was created, that seems like the most likely explanation to me. Only one way to find out, recreate the experiment and measure the wavelength of the reaction output. (you may not have the funds for such a measurement device as they're really quite expensive, maybe reach out to another chemtuber that does have access to such a device, or nick one from the nearest physics lab )😈
Your symptoms sound a lot like exposure to UV light, i.e. it started later that night, you felt like sand was in your eyes, and washing didn't help. Perhaps the burning magnesium with extra brightness from the POCl3 released more UV light than you are used to. Even a normal Mg fire can damage your eyes.
Yes. In my former line of work (it involved welding), we called it Arc Flash.
Seems to be a known thing, that the symptoms of phosphorus oxychloride exposure can be delayed.
I do remember that, due to steric hindrance, the reaction with alcohols is slow unless a nucleophile catalyst is used (pyridine is good for pocl3).
That really sucks. I might have been a bit gung ho in the lab but I wouldn't screw around at home tbh.
This sounds exactly like welders flash like everyone else said before. I've had the same symptoms after looking for a split second in a stick welding arc. Best thing to do is cry yourself to sleep.
Perhaps that burning magnesium reaction with POCl3 produced a different wavelength of light (UV, infrared) differing from other past experiments? What about the burning lithium aluminum hydride?
I'm no scientist....not yet at least lol
Just be glad you didn't have to get any injections in your eye. I have had to get one every 2 months or so for the past 5 years along with getting to look directly at a green laser 4 times trying to fix an injury to one of my eyes.
Very much think this is Welder's Eye, I got it once back when I was learning to weld at 16 and this is exactly what it's like, except I fell asleep and then woke up in horrible pain. I don't know which is worse honestly...
Clearly we need to replicate that weird complex burning reaction with a UVC camera/meter to see if that's involved.
Why would steel retort and 500C be required in the first place if it will start reacting at 250C?
Your symptoms are exactly how I described my experience with flash burns from UV exposure. Maybe something burning in this released more UV light than was apparent?
In my case I basically had no symptoms until I finally messed up and got over some arbitrary threshold, then it happened hours later when I tried to sleep. I didn't seek medical attention, but it was eventually fine.
I learned enough about chemistry to know that I know nothing about chemistry, which put an end to my lab coat explorations before I had a permanently detrimental event only one step beyond where you ended up after this dramatic adventure. Be safe.
You are truly a mad scientist and I love it.
I love the stab at Sniperwolf hahahaha
The green stuff looks like AlCl3, if it -reacts with moisture- is contaminated with FeCl3. At Uni, older aluminium chloride reagents always looked like that
Sounds like you flash burned your eyes. I have had it happen when exposed to welding or plasma cutting without at least shade 5 glasses. It feels just like you described. You wake up in the middle of of the night and it feels like you have sand under your eye lids and the more your eyes water the more painful it gets. I have just had to deal with it and it’s usually gone by the morning. I wonder if you got flashed by the magnesium or other combustions of this experiment.
I'm a welder and you described arc flash perfectly. UV light produced by arc welding will strip the top layer from eye balls.
I'm doubling my comment here, so maybe some people will find it useful:
As a welder, I can confirm, that your symptoms are exactly the same as the ones caused by harsh UV exposure. Starting not right away, massive tearing, feeling of sandpaper that grows over several hours to a degree when it's unbearable. In this case any antibacterial eye drops with anti-inflammatory effect would work (pretty much all of them). I'm not saying that is what necessarily happened to you, just saying that the symptoms you described are pretty much identical.
Also in welding it's also like that, from time to time, when people around you weld and not every time you are quick enough to close your eyes, most of the times nothing happens, but rarely, suddenly it causes the symptoms in the evening after the work, by surprise, maybe the dosage just a little big bigger, from a little less of a distance from your eyes etc. (I'm talking about your "I've done this... a few times before... messed a lot... it has never given me anything remotely similar...", because in welding people usually can regularly catch glimpses of welding without a mask and nothing happens, and then one time BOOM and it happens, when seemingly they caught not more said glimpses as usual, but evidently it was a little more/more intense/from a closer distance, but it usually feels just like "what the heck, I don't remember to catch flashes more than usual!")
Welder fabricator here, you have yourself flash burn. The sandpaper description is all I had to hear. Can happen welding, or looking at the sun, or magnesium related things. I’ve seen people get it from magnum flashers on the 4th which are primarily magnesium based I believe. You made the right call going and flushing em out given it was unknown at the time but my $ is on flash burn or as some call it arc burn.
It's... it's yellow. Ask Explosions and Fire about that.
Yellow anything in chemistry is evil
Is it possible that you used acetone to clean up some of the spills/glassware? Chloroketones can be nasty lachrymators and quite somewhat volatile
I think it's entirely possible you did get welder's eye. Your description of the symptoms is pretty much spot on for that. It won't necessarily happen for every bright flash that hits your eye. Unless you spend 12 hours a day, 6 days a week staring right at a strong UVC source-like, say, a welder-saying that those flashes didn't affect you doesn't mean a whole lot. There's also the fact that you were burning magnesium _and_ phosphoryl chloride. Maybe the two reacted in a way that created a much stronger UVC output. Or maybe when it was mixed with any of the other compounds and burned.
...or maybe it had nothing to do with any of that. Idunno, I'm not a biographist. Point being, more research needs to be done before ruling it out. Don't mean to give you grief or nothing; just putting it out there.
Not true. It only takes a few seconds of direct unshaded exposure to a welding arc to flash burn your eyes. Distance is your friend in this situation because of the inverse square law.
note to myself: remove eyes before experiments
9:33 Maybe that’s some sort of AlCl3 (aluminum trichloride) or AlClO (aluminum oxychloride) adduct with Phosphine. If the LiAlH4 can first perform successive nucleophilic substitutions to first dechlorinate the phosphorus and then deoxygenate it, the byproducts would be aluminum oxychloride, lithium chloride, HCl, and phosphine. Since aluminum oxide is so stable, the oxychloride would thermodynamically disproportionate and release the powerful lewis acid of AlCl3 to bind with the newly formed phosphine.
screw thread? spiral leakage path. as ave is fond of reminding us.
Nice video! This seems to be the same thing that happens to welders that dont use a mask or other people working close to a welder withought wearing eye protection. The symptoms are the same, it starts watering your eyes after a few hours and then you feel like there is sand between your eyelids. Very painful. Hope you are doing well now.
I have to agree with the flash burn theory. I spent 45 years as a welder and your symptoms sound exactly like flash burnt eyes. Nothing but time helps, and it can be cumulative, where a second exposure might only need to be partly as bad to produce symptoms. The only thing I ever found to help the pain was using slices of raw potato on my eyes with a damp cloth and rest. For some reason, the potato seems to pull the heat from you eyes and it reduces the pain. Go figure. My guess is something was different in your magnesium and it made harder uv than you expected for some reason. Maybe different chemical formula?
That hospital stay was so good I think I’ll try it a second time
Hi mate, this aligns with my experience of handling large quantities of dehydrating agents. The water reactivity of phosphoryl chloride and phosphorus pentachloride are such that you dry out and irritate your skin and mucous membranes. The dry acid formed qualitatively feels very different to 'wet' acid. When I worked with POCl/P2O5 I would always use a full face respirator in a ventilated space but often had irritated hands (under double gloves!) from the behaviour documented above.
It's not well documented behaviour because you need to be working in either a badly ventilated space and working on the 10s of kilograms+ scale.
Sounds like UV induced cornea damage, maybe something that you burnt together with the magnesium produced a significan amount of UVC.
Welding, arc furnaces or anything with enough energy plasma emits a lot of high energy uv
it doesnt directly burn you but it harms your cells. effects will not show up immediately but when they are about to regenerate. like a sun burn, its coming usually hours later.
maybe not a bad idea to strap some uv filters (basically just plain glass) onto your lab goggles.
uvc will pass trough quartz glass tho
There's a lot of comments suggesting it might be welder's eye (photokeratitis) from the burning Mg. From some inexperienced experience with some carbon arc lamp experiments as a teenager, I can personally confirm that the description matches photokeratitis pretty closely - especially the delay before symptom onset, although I do see a few problems with this hypothesis;
- Both polycarbonate and PMMA (plexiglass) used in safety glasses block pretty much all UV shorter than about 400nm (Most UV A, and all UV B and C), even regular glass blocks most shorter wave UV, so this doesn't seem likely.
- Unless the addition of POCl3 drastically increased the temperature and changed the emission spectrum/intensity, I wouldn't expect that small of a quantity of Mg burning for such a short duration to cause welder's eye? I'm not sure if it's still done nowadays, but back in the 90s, almost every high school chemistry teacher I had loved showing off burning wads of magnesium ribbon, which we looked at at fairly close range without eye protection and never showed symptoms. Then there's early photography "flash cubes", which had very fine magnesium wool in a bulb full of pure oxygen (Technology Connections has a good video about them), which would've burned much hotter than Mg in air, but didn't cause people any eye problems as far as I know (although they may have incorporated UV blocking materials I guess).
This has got me curious - I'm about to go down a rabbit hole researching this, would be keen to hear other's input!
i remember those flash cubes as a kid. calling that early photography makes me feel like i'm a hundred years old, lol! 🤣
Polycarbonate safety glasses on their own is not enough protection to protect from arc flash. There's a reason they sell Welder specific shades. The sheer amount of UV given off means if even a small amount gets through that's all she wrote.
His symptoms are so typical for arc flash I can't imagine what else it could be.
@@Setixir I agree, polycarbonate wouldn't be at all suitable for something like arc welding, but that's looking directly at a sustained plasma at close proximity for minutes or hours. Welding goggles also have to attenuate visible light, and protect from infrared as well (which can "cook" the cornea and vitreous humor from heating). This was a brief flash from burning magnesium, and having personally (along with classmates) looked at burning magnesium for several seconds on multiple occasions without any symptoms of welder's eye, I still suspect it was more likely caused chemically. There are plenty of cases where chemical burns/injury can occur with symptoms only appearing hours or days later (HF and mustard gas come to mind as examples).
I saw the salt method long time ago in a Paper i wanted to try it and u were faster lol!
Great Video!
As a medic, and later a RN, I have inserted many morgan lenses. Whatever incident brought the person in, after flushing with morgan lenses, they rarely do that thing again...
Do you think the light from the magnesium burning could've been different when introduced to this chemical? I'm not that knowledgeable about this stuff but it's something to consider
Brother gave himself chemical arc eyes😅 thank goodness you are okay dude. It reminded me of an old Discovery Channel tv show where they did the "worst" jobs possible. There was one episode where the host goes to work at a fireworks facility and the owner (who worked with him) warned him that one of the chemicals they were working with (i think it was dextrose? It was a long time ago) will make his eyes really uncomfortable when he gets to bed and to just let his eyes water away. Cheers!
You and @Nilered would be such good friends.
You are an extremely brave home chemist
Do you have the metal breakdown on the pipe?
I'm just wondering if it had a nickel content or coating?
That might explain quite a bit here.
thank god that you are well and nothing more dangerous happened
My best very uneducated guess would be since the burning did not start till after the shower that during one of the more violent reactions a small amount of some byproduct or unreacted chemical was launched and landed in your hair. Then washed into or around your eyes during the shower. Just a guess though!
Video is not available?
I am suitably terrified.
Is not lithium aluminum hydride a monitored chemical-due to its use in synthesis of many controlled substances? Which uncontrolled (inactive) analog of desoxyephedrine are you looking at creating?
My old teacher beg us not to use Cl if we didn't know the consiquences.
He was very good teacher that teached radioactive materials of Nils Bohr.
I’m glad your eyes are ok! I don’t feel the need to follow in your footsteps on this one.
It wasn't the magnesium that nerfed your eyeballs. This vapors form acids upon contact with the Alveoli, which are a mucus membrane. The conjunctiva of your eyes is also a mucus membrane. Either the fumes reacted upon contact with your eyes, or a byproduct of the reactivity tests did it.
2:52 No mom this is NOT a pipe bomb! it will only hospitalize me 😇
Please build a fume hood since you'll be doing similar future projects that might affect you in the long term.
And thanks for sharing not just the video but the mistakes and the thought process behind it, be safe.
Actually just finished my fume hood, and I'm hoping to make a video on the process!
@@LabCoatz_Science a video would be awesome and helpful, thank you sir
Ngl im surprised it still caused irritation after 2 hours, wearing PPE and washing.
As a welder, sounds similar to welding flash burns (with your eyes) just wondering if looking at the reactions of the magnesium etc might have caused something similar?
Were the iodine (and possible anti-clumping additives) in the table salt accounted for?
This sounds a lot like welder's flash to me. Is there a chance the fire from your experiment were a bit brighter than expected?
2:30 my homemade heating mantle which uses a standard Chinese 1L RBF heating element (costing around 10€/$) goes up to close to 500°C so yeah, this temperature is not very difficult to reach for amateurs.
The reaction can't be done in glassware?
5:00 ah ok, the answer seems to be yes it can...
I vote welders eye. I've had it before, and it was just like you described.
I can't believe TH-cam demonitized this because you put in a warning about how the chemical is dangerous. Seriously TH-cam, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Sounds like Welders eyes, also only starts to hurt when you go to bed. How much did you play with the magnesium (setting it on fire) that day?
I now know why my organic chemistry lab instructor only let us take 5 ml of this stuff at a time and never take it from the reagent hood
Came here for the info after watching all of the one you got actual money on.
If I was youtube I would want this to get money and demonitize the other one due to not explaining the need to protect yourself from this danger.
Sounds exactly like what I had happen when I inadvertently looked at UVC light too much.
Is lithium Chloride a contender in whatever byproduct was burning at the end?
Last but not Least , MASK YOU USIN IS FOR CAR PAINTS ( Paint Liquid Molecules Stick to Filter ) , NEXT TIME YOU BURN/EVAPORISE STUFF , USE GAS MASK " MP-4 " AND/OR " MG -2 " " PG -1 " " FM 12" ❤
I helped a guy do a whole mess of welding one day many long years ago - without proper eye protection - the eye problem you describe sounds very similar to mine...they called it "weld flash" from looking at the bright aura while the dude was welding
It ia crazy that the safety warning got a YT strike.
Do you have any TEOS hanging around your lab?
Two other possibilities: Do you vape, or does the ignition spectrum of LAH show up in the UVC range?
I think it goes without saying but be careful mate 😂
However, the marketing was good. I've been waiting for this ep since your community post lol
In my experience flushing your eyes with water can make them irritated, even though it may remove the contaminant, it has a different osmolarity than your eye requires
he's not a chemist, and a danger to himself