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October Chemical of the Month

Here it is with a little bit of a twist!! I look forward to hearing from all of you!!

A colorless liquid with cloudy clarity, that smells like garlic, is tasteless ,has a pH between 3 & 5, causes dizziness and unresponsiveness with specific gravity and vapor density > 1.

Tell us what it is, what reference you used to identify it, what it is used for, and how would you mitigate a large release of it.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Post on October 13, 2008 at 8:34am

I narrowed it down to 5 different chemicals. My first move would be to recon the site, and do a few meter readings. High on that list is determining if it is organic or inorganic. I used WISER and the results I got are (3) organics; Cyclobutane ,Methylnapthalene and Methyl Parathion. The remaining search reults were Nitrogen tetroxide and Sulpher Trioxide.

A Pid reading and a few other "standard" things should start to point us in the right direction.

What do you guys think?

Permalink Reply by Robert E. Shelton on October 14, 2008 at 7:19pm

OK a little more, it's organic. Now what are we narrowed down to?

Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Post on October 15, 2008 at 9:40am

After consulting a CHRIS manual, i am leaning towards Methyl Parathion, an insecticide commonly used in solution in agriculture. Caustic soda to nuetralize and overpack. Level B entry.

How'd I do?

Permalink Reply by Robert E. Shelton on October 15, 2008 at 9:47am

Before I tell you how you did and whether you have the right chemical, let's see if anyone else weighs in. It should be very interesting to hear what others think

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