Chemists & household chemicals

Jul 15, 2005 99 Replies

Latest TV report I seen suggest that the bombers might indeed have bought branded stuff from the shop floor, not some household chemicals over the counter. And it looks like you're stuggling if you want to buy old-fashioned chemicals from a Chemist, and as mentioned before it won't be long before the permitted list is reduced to mineral water (about 5 grams).

Egremont

BTW I'm reliably informed you would have been able to get Meths from a Chemist a few years ago.

Doesn't change after the doctorate.

"Dave Plowman (News)" frothed away in message news: snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk...

The Chemist never understood your babble, understandable so, and he gave you the stuff? If I know I would go to the police to stop this sort of thing, and get the Chemist locked up, and you sent back to the clinic.

In message , Egremont writes

Ah, now P of P you can get in Boots. That's where I got my last bag from. Dental grade stuff ISTR. Had to ask for it, as you do for anything worthwhile these days.

Most major reagents are available with a little lateral thinking.

Ammonia NH3 is a gas but Ammonium Hydroxide NH4OH is probably still available at a tradition hardware store as "Scrubbs Cloudy Ammonia". Although I've not seen any recently.

Dilute HCl is easily bought as brickwork cleaner from Travis Perkins(say), I get more dilute stuff from s/fix as Patio Cleaner which probably contains some detergent as well.

NaOH is readily available as 'Draino' drain cleaner even from the 'sheds'.

Conc. H2SO4 can be gotten from a real plumber's merchant as drain cleaner.

Paraffin - Just buy White Spirit.

In rural areas I would have thought getting hold of Ammonium Nitrate in the form of commercial fertilizer was plausible.

My chemistry isn't good enough to know what you do next ...

Chip wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.virgin.net:

I should think so too, those squeezy ones are lethal; I was nearly drowned by one myself.

mike

Oh, you get an upgrade to s*it-shoveller !

Friend of mine is a chemist. Oxford degree, with considerable experience in his field.

Now he's working as a sump-emptier for a chemical waste company on £18k, in the South-East. He's a bit annoyed about that, but a lot more annoyed about the binwagon drivers in the same company getting £30k.

And don't mention the twenty-somethings in marketing who have no chemical knowledge, yet get nearly £50k ! How _do_ you market a service whose customers are almost all driven to them by legal requirement anyway, rather than discretionary choice?

".880" ammonia is very hard to find (but easy to buy if you find it).

25% is the usual hardware store grade.

Easy to find. H2SO4 is particular popular for suicide(sic) / murder of disgraced women amongst some communities.

Check the price though.

Quite different stuff, and enough to matter. White spirit will evaporate, paraffin won't, subst. turps mostly does.

Impossible to get for years (except as explosive prills). Agric fertilisers are a mixture of salts, not just ammonia or potassium. They're also full of retardants, because of the risk of them being diverted for explosive uses. Reagant-grade potassium nitrate is still easy enough to get, if you go to the right place and don't buy huge quantities.

And a stainless steel fabricator for kilograms

You have the net, you have google... I haven't googled acetone peroxide yet.

(literally) About 20 years ago I stuffed a paintbrush into some sort of "solvent" in an old mug next to the kitchen sink. The brush is still soft(ish) and the solvent is still of about the same volume. There must be some sort of absorbance of atmospheric something-or-other.

I'm tempted to chuck the paintbrush away and reclaim the mug as a coffee-cup :-)

It used to be the case you could buy citric acid in the wine making section of boots. Mixed in solution with Sodium Metabisulfite makes a sterilising solution (or in fact, the gas evolved by it IIRC).

Fernox descaler is usually Sulphamic acid...

In Wilkinson you now have to ask for it at the counter, where no doubt its behind several locks.

DAve

Concur, take a look at Graduate sslaries in New Scientist. Your better off being a very well qualified dustman. no offence intended.

Dave

Yes - the fire officer at my local hostpital told me this was quite a headache.

Can't what?

What is?

No idea as there is no context before your comment.

Who wouldn't ?

Probably would if they printed the responses upside down and left all the previous week's news flowing in its wake.

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Yes, that's two of us who know in UK.

:-)

Mary

You're not a winemaker are you ?

;-)

Mary

They're not. It's ridiculous, takes all the magic out of the lab.

Mary

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