Comments on: Ethanolamine can save your skin

By: Wilfried Schuler

Wilfried Schuler — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 16:23:57 +0000

My dear Milkshake,

I started to work at the good old Hoechst company at the age of 14. And of course I had some very little accidents. But once you learned your job, you do not have burns and trouble all the time. I feared HF, of course. But with most other chemicals in the lab, gloves give a false feeling of security. The real point is not to spill and mess around with chemicals.

Regards from Frankfurt

By: Lucy

Lucy — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 15:10:10 +0000

Thanks! Milkshake!
They did warned us to be careful with it and we have to work in fumehood with gloves on. However, it was a crowded undergraduate organic lab. And in order to finish all the tasks during the 6 hours and not to be left behind, things were always done in a hurry. So although we are wearing gloves when work with chemicals, almost everybody wears the same gloves to write the notebook outside of the fumehood when waiting for the reaction to be finished. So everything spilled on the gloves contaminates the notebook and become potential hazard. Actually for my burn, I remembered that I got some spill on my gloves to be transfered to my notebook when I wrote down something on it and then somehow my ungloved finger touched it by accident. I can still find the trace of the droplet on my notebook…
I guess even my burn can be finally cured, there would be a scar left on my finger forever. I think lab instructors should teach students a good habbit of working in a lab with hazardous chemicals, especially for those freshmen. Just telling them the hazardous truth is not enough. When the gloves should be on and when the gloves should be off are very important. And it is also important to keep others safe when some equipment has to be shared. Besides, some assignment reading and writing down the MSDS reagarding each harzadous chemical, which is required in some of my previous labs, is very necessary for an organic lab. Otherwise, students may not pay enough attention on it and the golve contaminating things may happen as in my case. Anyway, for me, some glove-procedure or habbit must be formed and followed in my future labs because I learned the importance of it from my scar…tears…
Hope others would learn from mine not from themselves.

By: milkshake

milkshake — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 05:30:31 +0000

well the idea is to apply it briefly on the affected skin very soon after the exposure, before a blister or deeper damage develops, then wash it away. You should not use ethanolamine on old burns: ethanolamine is somewhat corrosive by itself and it is not gonna do you any good on a dead skin or in a festering wound.

Ethanolamine = aminoethanol is a cheap chemical which you find in every chemical company catalog.

If you were asked to work with thionyl chloride as a freshman, you should have been warned about the high nastiness of SOCl2 and advised specifically about taking the care to protect yourself when working with it – the gloves, hood sash down etc – the “read the label” is not good enough in this case. (Maybe you consider talking to an injury lawyer).

By: Lucy

Lucy — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 04:34:44 +0000

I am so happy finding this website and milkshake’s advice from the same experience as mine. I recently got a burn from some chemical, probably thionyl chloride. I am not sure because I couldn’t remember when I got the chemical and how. Actually, I didn’t realize it was a chemical burn until 3 hours later after my experiment using thionyl chloride. It started as a very minor skin damage which looked like caused by a common heat burn which did happen during the experiment as well when I was trying to move a heating block with my gloved finger. But things changed after two hours. When I came home, I washed my hand and put a Bandy on the wound and started cooking. During the cooking, I caught some water in the Bandy, but not very much. So I didn’t change it until two hours later when I have to go to bath.I unwraped the Bandy and was terified by what I saw: all the skin covered by the Bandy’s bandage area becomes severely burned, three times larger and deeper than the burn before I put the bandy on. Then I relized that it was not a heat burn but a chemical burn which can develop as that. I went to the clinic of our school the next day, and the nurse just treated it as a heat burn by coating it with some polysporin and another piece of bandy. But they did recommmend me to leave the skin open to the air when I don’t have to use my fingers and this really helps. However, after I traveled out of town for the whole day today,3rd day after the burn, of course with the bandy on for the whole day, I found new damage developed even under the sticky part of the bandy: a piece of skin actually was peeled out with the adhesive part of the bandy when I unwraped it. What can I do with it? I am worried the chemical has already soaked in my skin and keep burning my skin as long as I give it a chance. Can ethanolamine help with this kind of damage that happened already? Can I still use it even without knowing it was 100% thionyl chloride that caused the burn? Where can I get ethanolamine? Please help me…Milkshake, or anyone who have experienced the same thing before. Very appreciated!

By: benzaldehyd.com

benzaldehyd.com — Tue, 15 May 2007 00:07:13 +0000

Ethanolamin gegen Thionylchlorid

Falls man mal SOCl2 auf die Haut bekommen hat, sollte man sie mit Ethanolamin abwaschen um Verbrennungen zu vermeiden.
There are many corosive liquids that soak into skin and cause painful burns: acyl chlorides, alkylating agents, bromine, strong acid…

By: milkshake

milkshake — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 21:44:28 +0000

The young missy is positioned correctly. Please rotate your monitor if the apparition of hair getting stuck in my denture frightens you.

By: kinasepro

kinasepro — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 18:02:46 +0000

I find the tummy in question disturbing. plz flip upside down k tx.

By: milkshake

milkshake — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:46:55 +0000

I was about to display my hairy lager-tummy (to prove that no lasting thionyl chloride damage occured) but then I realized that it could be unsettling, to see it at lunchtime. I hope that the surrogate tummy that I found is more pleasing to behold.

By: Javaslinger

Javaslinger — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:30:16 +0000

Is that your tummy? Very impressive for a chemist….

By: milkshake

milkshake — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:40:37 +0000

No, he is a dick. Ethanolamine prevents organic acid burns. The label on the bottle says that ethanolamine is a corrosive agent but I used it on my skin many times (last time two days ago, I got a perfluorobutyric acid dropplet on my hand that I did not notice until it started hurting) and it always worked great, instantly, without ill effects. But you can’t use it in the eye, and you are not supposed to leave ethanolamine on the skin forever – after half a minute you wash it away with water and put a lotion on and/or bandage. One should start by washing the skin with water and acetone first, to get the bulk of chemical off, but the burn relief will not happen until you put ethanolamine on because by the time the burn starts to hurt, a greasy acidic substance has had already soaked into skin. I had some thankful colleagues over the years.

It kind of bothers me when an university official proclaims that their school would refuse a legal help to a burn victim, and would take disciplinary actions against the victim, for not adhering to the standard safety operating procedure mandated by a written policy. Especially if the standard procedure wouldn’t be too effective in this case.

There are two kinds of safety officers: one that actualy tries to help people, to make them work better. The other kind worries about covering his ass. Not coincidentally, the other kind also likes to throw their weight around. Threatening people with dismissal and sending them to punitive courses for re-education. All I can say is that I am delighted to work at an institute where they actually don’t have such pompous trolls in the Safety Office.