[John Kelly]

Just spent the last half hour passing on safety details of a dry solvent cleaner. The people requesting were a hospital dealing with a blokes son who had drunk water out of a Fanta bottle which had this cleaning solvent in.
He told me the cleaner had a number of different chemicals decanted into small soft drinks bottles. He was there cleaning a rug and left this bottle on site hence the incident.
If this was you, you should be strung up!

[lands]

HSE will shut him down. They should anyway

[stevegunn]

Which hospital was it?

[John Kelly]

Don't know didn't ask as I was so taken aback. Dialing code was 02825.

[Neil Grainger]

Area code is for Ballymena  Ireland.

[Fintan_Coll]

Oh , must have been the Ballymena Cowboy then.

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Guys

A sad story but an important lesson.

It is very poor practice to put any chemical in a bottle which is not designed for it.

This is dangerous not only for the mistaken identity reason but also because the wrong plastic bottle can allow solvent vapour to escape causing an explosive risk to yourself. Petrol in the wrong container is an example of this.

When I make up own brand stain removers I always make a small amount and dispose of it at the completion of each job.

Cheers

Doug

[carpet guy]

In my experience plastic bottles and solvent are not compatable, hence the reason solvent is sold in metal containers.

I had an near fatal experience about 23 years ago when I accidentally mixed bleach and cleaning fluid in the back of a van...................put me off the road for three months and has had a lasting effect.

I think the mixture produced mustard gas which was used in the 1st world war to devastating effect

rob m

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Rob

Most solvents are supplied in plastic bottles, white spirit, acetone ( nail varnish remover), isoprpanol etc BUT the plastic chosen will suit the particular solvent, for example isopropanol is in a brown pigmented bottle to stop UV changing its composition.

One of the reasons solvent cleaning technology is interesting and very effective on certain stains,  is the differing solubilities of the solvents, some ionic, some not , different solublity parameters etc.

I digress, its also important to know a bit of chemistry before mixing , another one to avoid is mixing an acid cleaner with bleach in a toilet !

Cheers

Doug

[stuart_clark]

I clean concrete and stone floors up and down the country ! I can be rest assured that I have had the right training wor this type of work, and the correct use of chemicals, I know of a case in scotland where some carpet cleaners were attempting to clean some stone floors in a pub ! the landlord locked them in and came back three hours later to find they were all unconcious ! they had all inhaled what the experts said was Phenelic gas a bit like cyanide, one guy died in hospital a few hours later and the others recovered a few weeks later

[AquaMagic]

Ive read that the Pressure washing guys have this problem when mixing Masonary acid with Sodiom Hypoclorite (which is just bleach i think), it'd be like being in the 1st world war trenches, nasty stuff.

Dewne

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Dene,

Exactly chlorine gas !!

Cheers

Doug

[carpet guy]

On reflection Doug, I have to agree with you. I used products some years ago, for stone cleaning which came in 20 litre plastic containers. Can't remember the details but bought them from a builders merchant.

rob m