Re: "much safer to handle", meaning what exactly?

Hello Cwk,

One of our group had a mishap when handling the 28% solution of sodium chlorite. He flipped the nozzle back, then reached up, on reflex, to wipe a piece of dust from his eye. Instant irritation and discomfort occurred. Fortunately, we were near an eye wash station, so we flushed his eye out and no damage was done.

In spite of our strict policies for handling this solution, we had a mishap. I decided to stop working with the 28% solution and dilute it down to a much safer 5% solution. You can do everything with a 5% solution that you can do with a 28% solution, it just takes a little more, and the 5% solution is much safer to handle and work with.

In addition, you need to thoroughly wash the 28% solution off of your skin, where you can simply rinse the 5% solution off, and spills are much easier to clean up with the 5% solution. Also, if you use different activation methods you can end up with explosive results using the 28% solution.

The 5% solution is just much safer to handle.

Tom