Just kidding

Beijing, Friday 12 September 2008,

An enormous explosion was the wake-up call for almost all of the proud hard working people of Beijing.
The chief of police Mr. Ma Tian stated that he had never seen such a terrible scene in his whole career. Further he announced that the person(s) responsible for this horrendous deed will not go unpunished.
The police did not want to comment on the remains of two bottles of hazardous chemicals found at the rim of the crater. According to a reliable source know to our journalist, these chemicals: sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid are used to make home bombs. Continued on page 2 of this issue

Just Kidding. We were having some trouble in getting a specific assay set-up in China. Nothing to complicated, in a sense it is very basic old analytical, or if you wish clinical, chemistry. It involves some extraction and hydrolysis in which sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid solutions play a role; just mL amounts. Chemicals so common that I would not think twice before using them. In fact you can probably buy them at any decent hardware store or whatever equivalent to that you may have in the neighbourhood. Agreed, sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) in pure form is not innocent and neither is concentrated hydrochloric acid. But hey, we are talking about a laboratory. People who are trained to work with chemicals etc.

Anyway the lab in question commented to us that they could not set the method up within the next couple of weeks/months because they would need a special permit for these 2 chemicals. Special permit? Yes. Yes, because these chemicals can be used to make a bomb. A bomb? From NaOH and HCl? Sure if you mix them it becomes pretty warm and you get hydrogen gas. And if you pour concentrated hydrochloric acid on sodium hydroxide pellets there is certainly some serious heat production with the boiling and splashing that goes with that. But other then getting a couple of serious alkali and/or acid burns there is no true danger. But a bomb? LOL. There is more explosive power in a liter gasoline!

Irritating, but what can one do? So we made some fun about the whole issue. The faked newspaper was my way of dealing with the frustration. Take care.