🚀 go-pugleaf

"Peter Fairbrother" <zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk> wrote in message 
news:BDC22F41.76DEB%zenadsl6186@zen.co.uk...
> Hans-Marc Olsen wrote:
>
>> Or will I create osmiumtetraoxide and poison myself?
>
> osmium tetroxide
>
> I TIG weld small parts in a glove cabinet filled with argon. The argon
> recirculates through the torch by a pump and filter. I do it to save 
> buying
> argon.
>
> I don't know if you can weld osmium, sorry, but if you do the above you
> won't make osmium tetroxide - no oxygen.
>
> btw, Osmium metal forms OsO4 just in the air, it doesn't need to get hot 
> or
> anything. Osmium metal is not very useful because of this, and it smells
> unmistakeably unpleasant. Osmium alloys can be useful, but not pure 
> osmium.
>
>
>
> OsO4 is nasty stuff, but it stinks and burns the eyes far too much to kill
> you, unless you have no eyes and have been snorting too much cocaine and
> can't smell. It burns the lungs too.
>
> If you can smell, even a bit, or have eyeballs, you will leave any room 
> with
> OsO4 in it _far_ more rapidly than you will get fatally poisoned.
>
> When there was a scare about OsO4 I worked out that in order to kill 
> people
> you would need to spend about $20,000 per person, and keep them for 12 
> hours
> in an atmoshere which would blind them in less than a minute.
>
> It's fairly similar to sulphur dioxide in it's both its toxic exposure
> levels and toxic effects. As far as we know it is not a cumulative poison
> (except in that it can burn tissue that has already been burned), or a
> carcinogen, or a teratogen, or a mutagen, and it does not cause heavy 
> metal
> poisoning.
>
>
> But we don't know everything, and my advice would be to keep well away 
> from
> both osmium and osmium tetroxide unless you hava a real need to use them.
>
>
> -- 
> Peter Fairbrother

what he said..hehe sorry 'bout the other posts but I couldn't 
resist..feeling in a mood I guess
:-)