Time to Strike Antifreeze Off Your List of Usable Poisons
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- Опубликовано: 9 сен 2024
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Correction: 1:43 The left side of the graph should be labeled as Celsius, and the right side should be labeled as Fahrenheit.
Ethylene glycol is the most common ingredient in automotive antifreeze. But for years it was used in homicidal poisonings. What made this household chemical so dangerous? And why is it no longer a viable poison?
#chemistry #poison #antifreeze
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Credits:
Executive Producer:
Matthew Radcliff
Producers:
Elaine Seward
Andrew Sobey
Darren Weaver
Host:
Alex Dainis
Scientific Consultants:
William Porter, Ph.D.
Michelle Boucher, Ph.D.
Leila Duman, Ph.D.
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell
Reactions is a production of the American Chemical Society.
© 2022 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.
Sources:
Intentional Ethylene Glycol Poisoning Increase after Media Coverage of Antifreeze Murders
www.ncbi.nlm.n...
Woman pleads guilty to killing husband with antifreeze
www.delawareon...
Homicidal Ethylene Glycol Intoxication
journals.lww.c...
Ethylene glycol poisoning: Quintessential clinical toxicology; analytical conundrum
www.sciencedir...
Ethylene Glycol Toxicity
www.ncbi.nlm.n...
Alcohol Dehydrogenases
www.sciencedir...
Why Is Antifreeze So Delicious?
slate.com/news...
Bitter and sweet components of ethanol taste in humans
pubmed.ncbi.nl...
Alcohol Metabolism: An Update
pubs.niaaa.nih...
Biochemistry, Lactate Dehydrogenase
www.ncbi.nlm.n...
Signal transduction and information processing in mammalian taste buds
www.ncbi.nlm.n...
What Are the Toxicological Effects of Ethylene Glycol Poisoning?
www.atsdr.cdc....
Antifreeze and Engine Coolant Being Bittered Nationwide
web.archive.or...
The impact of bittering agents on pediatric ingestions of antifreeze
pubmed.ncbi.nl...
The impact of bittering agents on suicidal ingestions of antifreeze
pubmed.ncbi.nl...
Toxicology of E-Cigarette Constituents
www.ncbi.nlm.n...
Food additive could serve as a safer, more environmentally friendly antifreeze
www.eurekalert...
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Propylene glycol is listed as “generally regarded as safe” by the FDA, which makes it a much safer alternative to ethylene glycol for antifreeze. But that rating only covers its use as a food additive. While the chemical is pretty much ubiquitous in vape juice, the health impacts of propylene glycol inhalation are still not fully understood. One study found that it caused alterations to the genetic biological clock in lungs, liver, kidneys, skeletal muscle, and brain.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5641932/
You need to change the title of your video It doesn't make any sense. And besides can't you bypass the bittering agent by distilling antifreeze to produce pure ethylene glycol. Academically speaking of course.... BEAHAHAHAHA
As a chemist, the synthesis is pretty easy, the distillation is also easy. There is no thing as a "safe" product, if someone wants to do evil.
@@isaacm1929 The distillation is not entry level It boils at around 200° c But it could be done. The synthesis is also not that difficult but you need to get your hands on a palladium catalyst. or you can just order it online
@@highlander723 The catalyst can be bought online, and you can use some sketchy modifications in a forge to distill it.
If someone wants to do it, well, they can.
@@isaacm1929 Why use a forage just get a decent heating mantle. or if you really want to flex your chemistry muscles you can do the distillation under vacuum to lower the boiling point..... either way the only way you're going to make it perfectly safe and remove it from antifreeze as a potential stock material is for the industry to just use propylene glycol.
It's the equivalent of adding denaturing agents to alcohol A quick distillation and some activated charcoal and you could quickly remove it..... hypothetically academically speaking.
My ex drank antifreeze to try and unalive herself. I figured out what was going on and called 911 and she got taken care of, but what saved her was she was drinking vodka as a chaser, to “work up the courage”. She didn’t realize she was drinking the cure with the poison.
She later told me she had done some research and figured she’d get drunk, drink a glass, go to sleep and not wake up. But… she also said she didn’t read far enough to know that the regular alcohol would actually save her.
She was saved by her own idiocy.
i tried to unalive myself a few times. alcohol didn't work as a "liquid courage". just made me drunk.
eventually i lost motivation to do it after a year and a half. and unfortunately i still hate everything 4 years later.
@@darkshadowsx5949 hope you find something happy to focus on. Try getting jacked, that usually helps
2 SHOTS… OF VODKA!
Alcohol works as an antidote by essentially competing with etylene glycol on the same enzyme. Though normally doctor will prescribe fomepizole instead
Even with the bitter flavor it is still sweet. I've been a mechanic for many years and when you take it directly it has a bitter flavor but if it's on your lips it sweet but with a slight drying feeling on your tongue.
So one of our producers, Elaine, had a housewarming party and Andrew brought over two solutions. One with denatonium benzoate, the most bitter substance on earth, with water, and the other with thaumatin, the sweetest substance on earth, with water. Both are odorless and colorless. We played a game where you have a partner and the first person tries one of the solutions while trying to keep a poker face. Their partner guesses which one they had. Long story longer, yeah that sweetness stays on your lips, but the denatonium benzoate has a miracle berry type of effect that changes the flavor of foods and just makes you hungry. It's interesting and 10/10 would recommend this game.
@@ACSReactions I'm appreciating these numerous long replies / discussion from the the video creator. Rare to see a creator engage with audience this much, also so much interesting information from audience side too.
As a millwright I can say that the stress of micromanaging suits makes me want to drink. I didn't realize that they were saving my life by forcing me on a slow march to alcoholism. To think, I could have saved so much cash on simple syrup in my old fashioned by just using the green stuff
To be honest, I always kinda wondered what took people so long to add a bittering agent to antifreeze in the first place. I mean it's been standard practice for things like denatured alcohol for literally over a century...
because someone would willingly drink denatured alcohol
while antifreeze is not something someone would willingly drink.
and humans lump things into categories as if they are entirely distinct and separate from each other.
Money. The manufacturer was not required to take safety into mind for their product by the government, and so they didn't. Only when pressure mounted to a point it was more fiscally harmful to not add a bittering agent did they start doing so. That's free market capitalism for you- literally dead children. There are thousands of examples of this in the US alone. The rate of poisoning and injury to children in the US has been and is phenomenally high.
@@WhatIsSanity even from the beginning. Everyone knew it was poisonous. Bit everyone was thinking. Why add something ment to stop people from intentionally drinking it when no one would.
@@TheDenialist Because of children and animals.
Depends on where. There isn't a warning sign on a lightbulb saying "Don't put it in your mouth", it isn't coated with bitter substance so people don't put them in their mouths...
I always pronounced it uh-see-tul-dee-hide forEVER because I was thinking "Acetyl group" and "Dehydrogenase" as the root words to combine. But I soon learned that it's based of "Aldehyde" and "Acetate" so its Acet+aldehyde not acetyl+dehyde
Alex feels incredibly validated--but seriously. We took a screenshot of this comment and discussed in Slack (she does read the comments but this one needed to be addressed).
When you approach it from an OChem perspective, it makes sense.
Speaking of, I am dreading my upcoming next-semester OChem labs ;_;.
Eh. Just call it by the systematic name ethanal.
@@bobbun9630 I have never heard anyone refer to it like that after school.
Butanal, on the other hand, is hilarious and should always be referred to by its systematic name.
So that's why you add water to the antifreeze tank. To drop the freezing point.
That's why you add _ethylene glycol_ to water. Water has a higher heat capacity, so it is a better coolant than ethylene glycol or a mixture of the two. However, pure water shouldn't be used by itself because A) it freezes too easily, B) it requires a higher pressure in the system to prevent it from boiling, and C) pure water can potentially cause corrosion inside the car's radiator.
@@SeanCMonahan it's the same thing, different order.
It's like saying you add juice powder to water or add water to juice powder.
@@ShinimagisFTW The coolant system's purpose is to keep the engine from overheating. Water is much better than ethylene glycol for cooling (it has a higher heat capacity, meaning the same volume of liquid can move more heat), but water has the drawback of freezing too easily.
Ethylene glycol is added not because it's a good coolant, but as an antifreeze that is cheap, not volatile, and chemically compatible with the components of the coolant system, the engine block, pump, radiator, and hoses. A mixture of water and ethylene glycol is a "good enough" compromise.
(window) anti freeze here in continental europe, where it doesn't get as cold, is already a water based solution (usable up to -40°C pure). so adding water only raises the freezing point. Motor anti freeze has to be mixed with water to get the lowest temperature, as it is ethylene glycol plus maybe some additives.
W O A H
If an animal accidentally drinks some antifreeze if veterinarians cannot get them to throw it up but it has not started damaging the body one antidote was titrated IV vodka [or any strong alcohol]. Now there is a pharmaceutical product they can use, but boy it was interesting to keep an animal drunk for days. I'm sure the Reactions staff can explain how it works.
Yes please.
I know somebody who had methanol accidentally poured on him, many many liters (40 liters maybe?).
It was enough to be absorbed through his skin, so as the first aid he had to drink lots of ethanol and water.
It's called competitive inhibition!
TLDR: The alcohol keeps the enzymes that produce the toxic oxalic acid etc busy so those are produced slow enough for the body to be able to deal with them.
As described in the video, the problem is not the ethylene glycol itself, but the products that are produced by those very enzymes that are normally for metabolising ethanol (=the alcohol in alcoholic drinks).
The idea is that by giving lots of ethanol over a long time, there's always a pretty high concentration of it in the body. There are only so many of those enzymes, and whether one binds to an ethanol molecule or a ethylene glycol molecule is random, but the higher the concentration of one of those chemicals, the higher the chance for the enzyme to randomly come into contact with it and then bind to it and convert it. This whole conversion process takes some time, during which the enzyme is occupied and can't convert anything else.
It's like 3AM right now for me, and English isn't my native language, so I hope this is at least somewhat understandable, sorry if not! Ping me if you have any questions. Also, of course this is quite simplified, but I hope that together with the information in the video, you'll get a decent picture.
@@adamrak7560
That is not just a one-off thing. During the pandemic, people were using hand sanitizer with methanol in it to such an extent that they were getting the consequences of drinking methanol such as blindness. So manufacturers took it out of sanitizer. Now I've seen ethanol as a common ingredient.
a lot of vet clinics (at least where I used to live, in the middle of nowhere) still use alcohol!
Another application for ethylene glycol is as a hydraulic fluid for fire hazard locations, as it serves as a fire retardant, I used to work in a waste-to-energy recycling facility and the refractory doors that closed the combustion chamber were opened and closed with a hydraulic system using this as fluid. It was pretty nasty
Interesting... Was it 100% or mixed?
The, very perturbed, brother of a dear friend of mine killed himself with antifreeze.
He had an habit of faking attempting suicide for time to time, and informing his family for attention.
The family after several attempts in as many years, didn't recognize the dangers, and didn't called an ambulance until it was to late.
Very sad, the family took years to overcome it.
I used to have problems with Acetaldehyde too. I learned to emphasize the Tal because not doing so would make my mouth do all weird things to connect Ace to Dehyde but emphasizing the Tal helps to bridge the two awkward parts of Acetaldehyde and leads to smoother and easier pronunciation!
I wonder if 'acetalaldehyde' would be easier to say?
This makes me feel so much better that it's not just me! I will try this!
ass eh (schwa) tol/tail deh hide
I think the problem is everyone lumps "ace" together to sound like the card in a playing deck. Thats not how it starts and it messes up the entire pronunciation. Least thats what I think.
@@platosbeard3476 Thats practically how I say it and everyone knows what Im talking about hahaha, just add that extra "al"
Propylene glycol is already sold as antifreeze for potable water systems.
Ethylene glycol has a similar LD50 to table salt; tiny quantities will not kill someone. But someone could easily drink a lethal quantity of it. I think it would be virtually impossible to eat a lethal quantity of salt.
Thanks for the presentation!
A lethal amount of salt isn't that much, but the difference is that salt have an instantaneous effect and it would become harder to absorb it inside the body. While ethylene glycol is slowly metabolized into the poison after getting into the blood stream.
@@tonymouannes true but unless you're drowning at sea the probability that someone could push past the discomfort of consuming that much salt orally is probably zero provided they have a functional sense of taste.
The person would wretch well in advance of that level of saltiness.
Making someone eat a pound of salt was used as a death sentence somewhere around the Mediterranean or middle east. Ancient practice, a few thousand years old at least.
Equivalent to a pound. I'm sure it was called something else. Think like as much as cupped hands hold. Not to far off really.
Conversely salt is terrible when used for antifreeze , it tends to form deposits and block the internal passageways of heat exchangers(radiators) used for cooling or thermal transfer. A small amount is REALLY bad.
Ontario Canada, tiny town called Cobalt.
A man killed the town dog, he was everyone's friend for 10+ years, he had multiple homes.
Dog catcher ingored him, he spent half his time sleeping in the post office so he could say hi too all the old people.
Well, a man killed him by filling the bowl infront of the post office with antifreeze. He was caught on camera.
He's been missing since 2008 I believe.
He won't ever be found, many of the lakes in that area were caused by mine shafts hitting springs.
I won't say anything for sure, but he's definitely down there.
Sometimes evil gets what's coming.
I’m reading this in a stereotypical “aboot” Canadian accent. And I’m Canadian lol 😂
y-you guys have a list of usable poisons?
The whole thing about this stuff lowering the freezing point of water beyond its own freezing point outside of a solution is pretty intuitive once you compare it to salt, which is solid at ambient temperature ranges but also lowers the freezing point of water enough to grit roads and clear pavements
1:41 this is a very common phenomenon. old school metalic fuse for example, is designed to melt at 183C to stop short circuit. but the fuse is an alloy of 2 metals (62% lead and 38% tin) that both have melting points much higher than 183C.
The melting point in those alloys is called the "eutectic point", and alloys that have a eutectic point are called, you guessed it "eutectic alloys", like Sn63Pb37 and Sn62Pb36Ag2. They are highly desirable as a solder material, not necessarily because of the lower melting point, but because of the phase transition from liquid to solid, which happens instantaneously, as opposed as having the different metals solidify at different temperatures as the solder join sets. That translates to nice, shiny, strong solder joints. This is also the reason people who do hand soldering hate the lead-free solders, they are not eutectic and the solder joints are of much lesser quality. This is less of a problem with industrial PCB production, but with hand soldering I still order "illegal" lead based solder to this day...
@@HMan2828 I only ever used lead free solder, with tiny amounts of copper and silver + rosin core, and I have no problems for electronics soldering. Adding additional flux helps with uniform spread, especially for thicker joins, that wick away the heat and the solder likes to glob up.
@@HMan2828 wait, is the leaded solder considered "illegal"?
jesus, i still see it being sold in the open market in my country.
and now i fully realize why that solder left a grey residue in my fingers. my mind has not degraded yet due to lead poisoning, that's good
@@itsdokko2990 It's not really illegal, but you cannot sell anything as a commercial entity that isn't RoHS compliant, legally... The gray residue isn't as bad as the sweet sweet lead fumes when soldering... lol
@@HMan2828 oh sweet flux fumes, best part imo of soldering xD
Very interesting, thank you! 1:43 looks like confused C and F
Ack! Yes, you're correct, thank you for noticing. We added a note to the video description. Apparently 2 producers, 1 executive producer, and 3 PhD scientific consultants are no match for the RUclips comments section.
well, not as bad as when you want to light your barbecue.
I remember one time I was helping a friend work on a classic car. We were both leaning over the engine when he was cracking open the radiator. Unfortunately it was still hot enough to be slightly pressurized, but not hot enough to burn. We both got anti-freeze sprayed onto our faces an into our mouths. After both of us spitting onto the ground to flush the antifreeze out, we both looked up and remarked about how sweet the taste was.
fun fact they put antifreeze in wine in Austria for one year in 1985. (diethylene glycol though)
IIRC, some Austrian winemakers switched to "di"ethylene glycol after other countries wised up and started testing imported Austrian wine for ethylene glycol. The "di" product tasted sweet too but was not detected by that test.
Good stuff. I'm liking the style, pace and energy of these videos.
Thanks--we appreciate it and are glad you like it!
Hey that means I can now drink it! No more heating bills, take that big energy!
Pretty much any mechanic that's ever had to crawl under a car to mess with the radiator hose has gotten a drop or two in the pie hole. It is sweet, but with a nasty, rubbery, chemical undertone. (Of course, that's coming out of an engine, plus it was after 2012.) I certainly wouldn't call it pleasant, and knowing the toxicity, made every effort to minimize exposure. (We're talking 0.1ml or so...certainly nowhere near an LD50.)
Ethylene Glycol and broken glass is how my neighbor killed my Lab back in 89, the investigator who came found the bowl they fed him from and had them arrested,
Hopefully manufacturers continue to increase the amounts of denatonium benzoate in household products.
As a Montanan, I can confidently vouch that Andrew was, in fact, not joking whatsoever. It’s fuckin cold here man lol
Uhm, that was a dark episode, but I anyway wanted to wish the entire Reactions crew a merry Christmas and the best wishes for the new year.
I mean we did state we *weren't* murdering anyone. But thank you--Happy Holidays to you and yours!
@@ACSReactions It's not murder if you're not caught.
@@radiobaked Yes officer, this person right here /\
Welcome to the list everyone, we're glad you could all make it!
get a hobby lmao
Hello, brother.
Funny... The first thing that immediately came to mind is the episode in House where he uses tequila as an antidote for a prisoner who drank copier fluid to self-exit, causing methanol poisoning.
Apparently it’s also used in things like snow globe liquid - don’t let pets drink it! (Aside from broken glass issue)
Now what am I gonna wash my 25 breakfast silica gel packets down with!? 1 litre of soy sauce colon cleanse!?
@@dwaynezilla We personally like to wash our 25 breakfast silica gel packets down with 1 liter of mannitol
@@dwaynezilla 96 marijuana gummies and gas station sushi.
This change in the properties of miscible materials when added together without causing chemical reactions is from the realm of a fascinating crossover in science called
_Physical Chemistry_ 😊
This is also the branch of physics that explains why a mixture of 50 ml of water added to 50 ml of ethanol will not give you 100 ml of mixture.
Child lock caps would help prevent small children and pets from getting into hazardous containers. Education on basic safety guides and handling of household chemicals is also incredibly helpful. I remember getting a bit of that from school, and my father also taught me about basic safety. Can't understate how effective education can be in prevent accidental self harm.
Schooling is meant to prepare kids for the world as adults, stands to reason that part of that schooling would be basic harm reduction methods and conscientious thinking tools.
Child lock caps really arent effective if they are the ones you press down before you turn them. Ive seen children open them, when I was a child I could open them. It doesn't take being smart either, if you cant get a container open trying to force it open is usually what a child tries to do which would amount to pushing the lid down and opening whatever it is you dont want them to have.
@@ripno2672
I agree some locks are too easy to open and some are too hard. A child left alone will figure it out eventually. Still there are a few methods used to make containers more difficult to open and sometimes a few precious seconds are all that's needed to save a life.
It's about reducing risk. This is where the education component comes in. Educate kids when they get into school so they don't accidentally kill themselves when old enough to be left alone. Lessons in basic safety will be applied to child care, and lessons in sex ed will mean parents are having children when they're prepared not the first time they have sex.
These aren't just ideas I pulled out of thin air, I've seen them work effectively. It works.
Literally almost the entire developed world does this and we have far lower cases of child mortality by percentage compared to the US.
@@WhatIsSanity We do that in America, and it either gets implemented like crap or just is not effective.
@Sebastian Hahn
When you don't read past the first sentence.
Curiosity is part of nature of being a kid.. not like you’re just so adultly that your big strong hands can open it but a kid can’t. Lol.
Plus what about cases like intentional poisoning, or being placed in a different container??
It’s great that your parents taught you that, however I think you far too much of an image of a perfect world, and what happens/where kids go back to after school
I tried to oof myself with ethylene glicol years ago. It was hell to go through, but I'm glad I didn't poison myself with something else instead.
Well, methanol would be much more dangerous. Good luck you didn't buy that. Stay alive.
Propylene glycol can be effective for lowering the freezing point of our blood. The antifreeze tick gene can also help lower the freezing point of our blood. This way, we won't have frostbite until much colder temperatures.
I gave my cousin anti freeze telling him it was a chug jug. I'm now on the run
"let me start by saying im not planning on poisoning anyone"
thats EXACTLY what someone who was planning on poisoning someone would say!
Well, the true crime doc buffs out there all know that there are way better substances you could use anyways. Antifreeze poisonings are *almost* always accidental.
@@ColonelSandersLite sucsynalcoline (spelled wrong)
Fortunately, my FBI agent knows I play D&D so whenever I lookup about things like poison it's either for my TTRPG character, or bugs.
Fun fact: the polymer of ethylene glycol, called polyethylene glycol, is a perfectly safe, and mild laxative used medically due to it’s capabilities of pulling water.
PEG is not exactly a polymer of ethylene glycol, because one water molecule must be removed for each monomer added to the chain. More accurately, PEG is a polymer of ethylene oxide (-CH2CH2-)O, with each molecule terminated by H- and -OH.
"I don't care for perchloroethylene, and I don't like glycol ether"
So the title is actually completely wrong …. Got it.
No, it's right. Did you not watch the video? You cannot surreptitiously poison someone with antifreeze because it now tastes odious.
Awesome video, thank you!
I have a bottle of denatonium benzoate and I tell you, that stuff is crazy bitter! The "most bitter compound known to man" allegedly and I believe every word of it. I *opened the bottle*, that was it, and I could taste it. Instant disgust! Then, I took a small sample and scooped it into a a vial and immediately sealed it shut. But with the action of dumping it into the vial, a tiny, and I mean tiny amount got lifted into the air. Within 30 seconds people in other rooms were gagging and yelling "what the hell is that!?!?!". They could taste it in the air in other rooms due to the air ventilation systems of the building! Just from that tiny bit getting into the air!!!
I would venture to bet that it would work way better for deterring children from drinking ethylene glycol if they'd add more denatonium benzoate to it. If you look up the SDS, you're likely only going to see something like 0.00001% of it being the denaturing agent. That's only like 1/10 of a gram, or 0.1g. knock that up to a full gram per gallon and you'll have something that'll make you puke at the first sip. Guaranteed. Don't believe me? Try it with propylene glycol so it's safe to try and then come back and report what you think. I'll even bet that you'd agree after that. Lol
I live in Montana. 9 degrees Fahrenheit has absolutely happened here during late spring. Not much of an exaggeration at all.
Same here lol
"Let me just start out by saying that I;m NOT planning on poisoning anyone"
Hmmm.... she doth protest too much, methinks
The only issue with the title, is the fact that there isn't really any mixture of chemicals that could provide the same effect as antifreeze, I could be wrong but in case I'm right this issue will have to be brushed aside intill something is done
You should see how many food products propylene glycol is in.
They are related, both depress the freezing point, but the subject of your video is WAY more poisonous.
I’m fairly sure the Fahrenheit and Celsius axis are the wrong way round on the graph at 1:43, incase anyone else was confused by it
Someone who is absolutely planning on poisoning someone: “I’m not planning on poisoning anyone.”
A couple of years ago a Brazilian brewer had an accident with its cooling tanks, caused by ethylene glycol.
For medication, food or drink industries that need antifreeze for it's equipments the LAW DEMANDS denatured ethanol to be used, but for all other industries ethylene glycol is allowed.
But the ethanol is much more expensive, so they used the cheap alternative.
The problem was that the cooling water leaked into the beer, contaminating it with ethylene glycol, and the results were the expected.
Some deaths, some blinded people and a lot of kidneys damaged.
just a small tip: you can ffw to further show how the solid precipitate falls to the bottom of the beaker
The nice thing about the metal nanoparticle one is that if it is MORE effective than Ethylene Glycol, it is immediately marketable as a performance product that car enthusiasts would gladly pay the premium for. From there, economies of scale could come into effect and bring the prices down to the point where it would make sense for something like the EPA to mandate as a replacement.
What does the metal nanoparticle do when it gets into the environment in large quantities?
There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.
@@Kandralla one I saw was just silver and in pretty low concentrations, I think the best were alloys, nano silver is not good for bacteria and fungi but normal spills shouldn’t be a problem, a lot of current antifreezes have some metals in solution (I don’t think they are nanoparticles but I could be wrong) to prevent electrochemical messiness happening to the engine.
@@glenecollins It was a rhetorical question. The point I'm trying to make is often we jump to a new thing because the old thing, with years of data, looks bad compared to the new thing, with little data.
Plastic was the new thing 30 years ago, it made it cheaper to transport stuff, you didn't have to worry about containers shattering in transit or in your home, now we're rethinking that.
Asbestos was the same way.
The problem is that we seem to jump on the new hotness without really assessing the possible side effects.
@@Kandralla I was just trying to point out that you may be being needlessly pessimistic, That problem is one of the reasons we have environmental protection agencies. They fail sometimes but since CFCs most have done a reasonable job at catching at least short term problems before they happen. They are already reacting to longer term pollutants like Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) in firefighting foams etc.
In the US the EPA seems to err on the side of banning things after they have been shown not to be safe rather than banning stuff till it is shown to be safer than current alternatives.
In the case of colloids we generally have reasonable information on how they will react in the environment (go into solution, precipitate, bio precipitate etc etc).
The EU which is a huge market now has been preemptively banning new solutions until the manufacturers can show they are less damaging for a fair while now so most manufacturers have to run through expensive product testing to get into that market and the EPA takes note of those results so the product often gets pulled (embarrassingly) if it fails testing for the EU.
@@glenecollins Or you/they are making the same mistakes that lead to the problems we have today. There is very little data on how nanoparticles of an element will effect the environment. Nanoparticles are not just "smaller versions of big particles". Things act very differently when surface area to mass is high.
You probably have flour in your house, you probably don't think about how dangerous flour can be if a bunch of it ends up in the air.
Caution is warranted, but often not practiced when someone has a neat new toy that will solve a problem.
We use DOWCAL-100 and DOWCAL-200 as antifreeze for industrial cooling circuits. One is Ethyline glycol, the other Polypropenol. Dowcal-200 does cost more. Completely water soluble, a bit oily to the touch. We always use a full face sheild as protection against possible backsplashing, and cleanup with lots of soap and water. No drinking, eating smoking allowed while handling.
This was a great video. I enjoyed it immensely. More similar content, please! (And good job, BTW! 😀)
no it's cool, it's cheaper than most poisons so I'll keep using it
Now we only have to worry about India and Chinese pharmaceutical companies adding ethylene glycol into their products as a cheap substitute for nontoxic propylene glycol. One only needs to do an internet search to see how many people have died from this. In fact in the past week lots of children in India died after a cough syrup was contaminated in this way.
Mix tin and lead in a 60-40 ratio and combined they too have a lower freezing point than the individual elements themselves. Neat.
Happens with a lot of alloys, usually for the same reason
Very interesting point about propylene glycol mixture being used as an engine coolant.. my worry was the second part.. the metal nano particles...
I'm not a mechanic (IT guy) but my little auto knowledge gut tells me any kind of metal in a system that makes contact with major engine components makes me a little squeamish... Nano sized or otherwise. I'm curious how long those chemists who made the solution tested their invention.. long term results as use in an engines coolant system would be very intriguing..
Coolant shouldn't be your lubricant, so I'd think it's ok. It's not touching and of your wear parts in an engine like oil is.
Nano particles are orders of magnitude smaller than what you are envisioning, and they are smaller in section than the film thickness between moving components. It would be equivalent to >250,000 grit sandpaper, or 100+ times smoother than the finish of any dynamic interface in an engine.
Nano particles in suspension are not a wear concern.
I'm more concerned with what metals they are using, because PG is also very sweet tasting. Lead has a sweet taste. I assume that they would use the same bittering agent as they use with ethylene glycol, but she also said that the addition of the bittering agent didn't significantly reduce pediatric visits due to ingestion.
Why don't we just raise the temperature globally instead of dealing with this? I know industrially we use methanol based antifreezes, I'm sure ethanol could work too. Used some beat syrup based antifreeze in a system that had the potential to leak into water once.
I wasnt thinking you were going to poison anyone. Now after watching this I do believe though....
I can confirm that antifreeze (used to) taste delicious.
Oh no...
As a person who works on diesel engines, I hate antifreeze, smells bad, gets all over everything, does not evaporate , so hard to clean up, and yes tastes bad, sometimes it gets in your mouth while working. I agree they need a replacement.
Great video, thank you!
It would've been interesting to talk about how boiling point is affected because that is also of interest with coolants.
I didn't quite pay attention to the video... you said something about using ethylene glycol as vape juice? 😅
Methinks that before they substitute a less toxic coolant, car (combustion) engines will be a thing of the past..
@Sebastian Hahn You reckon they'll mandate use of less toxic coolants in the next decade, right?
top ten videos that will put me on a List for watching
There is a lot more to finding a replacment coolant than just freeze point and heat transfer. You have useful life, corrosion inhibition(huge issue), compatibility with seals and hoses, high temperature performance.(ethyleneG also raises the boiling point substantially)
There are waterless coolants on the market that last longer than the engine (drain and add to another engine) and have no issues with corrosion, eliminating the need for jugs of spare coolant and storage/disposal of buckets of old coolant. But these fluids have a very high upfront cost including a changeover cost of flushing out the old coolant with an intermediate fluid. Auto manufacturers won't front that cost because they know most buyers don't even know to check the coolant let alone what type and warranties run out before corrosion issues ever cost the company a dime in repairs.
3:30 "In order to freeze, two of THE SAME kind of molecule [...]"
Why does it have to be the same molecule though?
@@gregoryford2532 That doesn't make sense because, if you mix a low concentration of one molecule with another liquid, at some point everything will "freeze" (become non malleable) and you won't say that a molecule A trapped in a sphere of frozen molecules B are just trapped and are "liquid" because at the end, you can't really say that a single molecule is liquid or solid. A better way to look at it is that a locked molecule whether with same type of molecule or not is "frozen". Now, the question is, can molecule "get locked" with a different molecule without actually "fusing" and making a different molecule?
Fun fact not mentioned: This is the stuff that they added to bad wine to undetectably make it taste sweeter and sell as quality wine, and this turned into a big scandal in Europe in the 80s as many brands were exposed for using this trick.
Oh yes, Austrian antifreeze wines, quite famous.
@@petrmaly9087 living in Germany at the time I thought it was mostly associated with France, The Simpsons did a take on it.
@@MadScientist512 I'm from southern Moravia, so we know this as Austrian issue.
😳 Me, watching throughout the whole video.
Just FYI, it's spelled "nemesis"
Hey yeah! It IS always hydrogen bonds! hahahaha
You heard it here first.
Good explanation. Thanks. Hope this channel gets more views.
Friendly reminder alcohol meant for consumption is one of the primary methods of treatment for anti freeze poisoning.
Don't make your dog drink a shot of vodka unless you have no other options though, it's meant too be delivered via a vain by a vet.
Also, a shot glass of 40% alcohol would probably kill a dog.
Reptile owners across the board when you mentioned oxalic acid: 😬😬😬
I keep 2L of propylene glycol for treating ketosis in dairy cattle
40 degrees.
Celsius or Fahrenheit?
Yes.
But I spent the last decade building up a tolerance to ethylene glycol
I was unaware of the v-shape curve of the glycol to water ratio until this video. Most of the graphs out there cut off after 60%.
Hahhaaaa!!! When I was an apprentice mechanic one of the guys used to use a spoonful of ethylene glycol in his coffee when we ran out of sugar!!! As far as I know he's still alive!
Oh, that's good, they didn't banned it, they just added bittering agents.
Good!
But to the honest, considering it's effects were already fairly known, killers were likely already switching poisons, so we will quickly know what's their next flavor of the month.
If somebody has a drug arrest history, a suitable poison is trivial. Sure, it will turn up, but it will just be assumed they relapsed.
@@bcubed72 Yeah, that's a thing...
But I suspect this is harder than it sounds in most cases.
The Austrians call it “Tannin”....
Good, I can keep drinking my favorite beverage: ethylene glycol with a twist of lemon and several methanol/ethanol cocktails.
DAMNIT THERE GOES MY WEEKEND PLANS
Propylene glycol has been used as a coolant in Bobcat equipment for decades now. Thankfully here in south Florida antifreeze is not necessary.
7:39 Just go to some mechanic shop and ask any of the techs, one of them should be able to tell you what it tastes like. 🤣 I've heard of particularly shitty people using antifreeze to poison dogs and always made sure to clean any up that I spilled.
I remember some time in the 1990's there was an antifreeze you could buy called "Safety Freeze" and I can't remember if it used propylene glycol or something else, but the selling point was that it was as effective as normal antifreeze, but not as toxic. I used it in an old slant six I had when I was a teenager, and it never froze or boiled over. They stopped making it after a couple of years.
It's called Sierra and it still exists.
This was great! Subscribed
Damn, there goes my plan for tomorrow.
lol feds tryna stop me from poisoning squirrels in my neighborhood, FFS 😂
Huh, so the safer varient is probably of better use in places where the temperature is milder, like places close to the coast
I was thinking of using methanol or some kind of automobile antifreeze to defrost some lock I have outdoors, and when I read the title I thought you meant it's no longer an effective option so I watched to see if the laws of chemistry/physics had changed or something. Instead I learned that the antifreeze at the store might not be methanol and why these short chain alcohols lower freezing point a lot only in loosely equal mixtures. I would appreciate if the video title had been more precise.
You seem to be confusing two different things. Methanol has never been used in commercial antifreeze for automobiles (though it is used in some racing cars during the summer). It's generally sold for use in fuel lines to remove water from the system.
The video title was quite precise, as the topic was the use of antifreeze as a poison.
@@kmoecub when the title said "usable poison" I thought they meant to put it in the same category as any number of chemicals that bear WHMIS symbols and that it had somehow lost its function.
As for methanol, I was going off what I learned in high school chemistry. I guess I'll have to look into whether my teacher had fed us some factual error.
Methanol is used as an antifreeze - but only in products such as windscreen de-icer
Great video, BUT .... Your graph at 1:45 needs to be corrected. :( Confused the heck out of me until I realized that the Y AXIS labels are mislabed .. meaning F should be C and vice versa.
So it basically gives you instant and severe gout? Ugh.
When I was a kid we had a few cats die from drinking antifreeze. We had to put them down behind the shed, because we didn't have money for a vet.
Why'd you still keep them outdoors after the first?
@@cyemonkey1828 They were barn cats and they all got into it, I guess. I was really young so I wasn't really making the decisions around the house
You could use systamatic names ethane-1,2-diol, ethanal, 2-hydroxyethanoic acid maybe?
What poison tastes like soap? I've been poisoned for years.
I had used and petitioned for the continued use of (Propylene Gylcol) coolant in my mining trucks for over 10 years. Although we have recently moved to a more modern coolant. Using PG was an easy decision due to the safety and environmental considerations when compared to EG coolant. The risk profile is simplified and from an economic perspective it was easily comparable EG.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to comment, in my opinion and I believe that this opinion is shared by thousands if not tens of thousands that ethylene glycol antifreeze should be banned. This highly poisonous substance is killing thousands of innocent animals and could be replaced by propylene glycol antifreeze which is far less toxic at the very least a bittering agent such as denatonium benzoate could be added to ethylene glycol antifreeze to make it less appealing.
From what I can see petitions do absolutely no good whatsoever. The only course of action. I could see, is for a peaceful protest.
Ethylene glycol mix with water makes better antifreezes, learned that in my chemistry curriculum in high school😊 back in day when students leaned something useful in schools
1:12 - I've visited Montana, that's probably not a joke.
Your graph confused the hell out of me until I saw the correction under it. 40C (which is a hot summer day in Australia) is depicted as the freezing point of pure water but our rivers don't freeze/thaw then. I should have spotted exactly what was wrong but somehow I did not until I read the correction.
It's a little weird to hear somebody talk about ethylene glycol and ingestion WITHOUT them talking about the Austr(al)ian wine tainting scandal...
I have my own perspectives on bettering agents. My cat would not stop licking himself and I tried using a bettering spray even when I soaked him he would still lick himself to the point of making himself bold. I don’t think it works for cats.
Well it TOOK THEM LONG ENOUGH to add the bittering agent. We figured out to add smells to gasses that were dangerous a long time ago, but apparently not to make things that are poisonous taste bad if they have a sweet flavour.
I'm surprised that something so tasty and so poisonous did not have flavor adulterants included sooner
today I learned that the fire type pokemon HO-OH was used to make antifreeze.