Common Hardware Store Chemical Can Kill Suddenly

MI2AZ

Active Member
Swift death

Setting aside longer-term health concerns, such as cancer, the danger posed by methylene chloride is its one-two punch when fumes accumulate. Because it turns into carbon monoxide in the body, it can starve the heart of oxygen and prompt an attack. The chemical also acts as an anesthetic at high doses: Its victims slump over, no longer breathing, because the respiratory centers of their brains switch off.

An open flame, meanwhile, can transform methylene chloride to phosgene. That’s the poisonous gas used to deadly effect during World War I, responsible for more fatalities than chlorine and mustard gas combined

The 1986 triple-fatality shows how swiftly death can come.

Several contracting firms were working on projects at a dam pumping station in Laurens, South Carolina. One had employees applying paint stripper to an underground area, described by OSHA in records as a basement and a pumping pit. Those workers managed to evacuate after the fumes built up, but when one man went back in, he was overcome so quickly he couldn’t get out.

He died. The emergency medical responder who tried to rescue him had to be hospitalized. Two of another contractor’s employees went through the same exercise, one entering the area to turn on the sump pump and passing out, the other felled while checking on him, according to OSHA records. The first man survived; the would-be rescuer did not.

To top it off, an electrician working aboveground “heard an unusual noise,” according to OSHA, and died in the basement when he went to see what it was.
 

Djarum300

Addicted Member
I worked in a paint store for years. Paint strippers, especially some of the solvent based ( there are some organic enzyme based) are really nasty. I always recommended using the least dangerous stripper that would get the job done. I've actually seen paint strippers melt "gloves" that were supposedly designed for the job.
 
Top