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During summer 1996 I researched design and synthesis of catalytic hyperlethal agents on an sioalted island in Canuckistan. That two cups of the stuff could kill all its designated Earthly lifeforms, give or take a species, was acceptable. That the US War on Drugs viewed our work as recreational pharmaceuticals and subject to heinous confiscation, prosecution, Ruby Ridge and other Official truths was amusing. The problem was Official safety. We ordered 100 grams of a cell culture pH buffer, and it required an armed escort over the border lest the ecology go for a Burton. My suggestion was to sheath the wooden crate holding the steel can holding the metallized PET chemical pouch holding the cardboard box holding the bottle with the loose cap, in absorptive Enviro-whiners' petitions. It was not well received.
(Has anyone filled lab rats with 10% of their body weight/day of vermiculite for a year to see what happens? I'm talking chronic reproductive whatever when suitable adjuvants are added!)
I purchased a 5 kg bucket of 130-270 mesh Merck Silica Gel 60 for column chromatography from the French-immersed People's Republic of Canada Green Card-holding distaff employee of the Department of Chemistry stockroom. Lest there be any room for information on the outside of the container, it was plastered with giant International Warning Orange placards divulging the extraordinary and lethal hazards of... the plastic bucket. In Spanish.
"¡Aviso! Niños pueden caer adentro de el balde y ahogarse. Retire los niños delos baldes aunque solamente tengan un poco de agua."
My immediate reaction was the obvious one - Why aren't Quebecois rioting over this flagrant linguistic cultural transgression? Despite appearances, the warning does not concern kids and your bald retired uncle enacting another McMartin Pre-School brouhaha. It expounds in most sober Hispanic/Latino/wetback terms that,
There is a brilliant orange graphic of the process, to help you get it right. The depicted kid is obvious victim to historic White Protestant European oppressors of Peoples of Color given his attire. (A real Hispanic/Latino/wetback indigene would wear a gang bandana over his sweating shaven pinhead.) It didn't look very convincing to me, though appending a child safety seat and an automotive airbag would probably do the trick.
I took a spare empty bucket, added an inch of distilled water, and placed it in the Faculty Lounge. No dice. The effect must be something like receptor site lock and key theory. Had I added two xenocryptophytoestrogens used as bug killers plus a baby crocodile with an undersized wee-wee, a gaggle of assistant professors might have made tenure by next Wednesday.
Science will not be thwarted! I went through the building signing out more buckets, added tap water, strained out the crocodiles, and placed them by the dorms. The campus hosted a revolving summer hostelry of everything from Mongoloid Idiot athletes (Project Track Shoe) to Tibetan Throat Singers to Celtic car bombers (political wing only, and only Grits). Aside from catching three condors, a whooping crane, and a snail darter colony - had to leave that one in place - no dice.
Imagine what would happen if the bucket had dirt added rather than water. Within minutes there would be a dead child, a shallow grave, and a News at 6! investigative team filming the incident. I had to act.
The miracle of this electronic age is that I could FAX WMHIS and OSHA on the QT SOP re kids DOA, their VIPs' IBM PCs updating TSCA and ACGIH TLV-TWA through 29 CFR 1910.1200 A 3 a,b,c and 6 a,b,c so DOT action boosted MSRPs blowing NSF-funded POs. The BATF and FBI through DoJ then made it impossible to buy the silica gel re CERCLA, thus saving the kids at least until a NIOSH review convenes apropos APHA. Why didn't the bucket have a RTECS#?
We now collect the silica gel buckets each morning and afternoon under Ministerial administrative oversight, convey them under armed guard to Engineering in a special carrier, and bore out their bottoms with a giant water-cooled high velocity CNC augur. The scrap is bailed with high tensile stainless steel razor wire prior to being shipped to First American villages where the remains are recycled into native art for sale to tourists. The most popular item is the traditional illuminated native water carrier, though the Inuit artisans have religious proscriptions LLD about selling them to immigrant Mexican farm workers.
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