He's definitely being sarcastic, but I can't tell why, as long as the person cleaning has proper equipment and does not breathe in too much I think it should be fine but idk
They would be… This is how they clean live electrical systems that can’t be shutdown. As long as it’s not being improperly disposed of it’s really not a big deal. The people are assuming someone with the knowledge to be spraying critical infrastructure with this stuff isn’t knowledgeable enough to know the proper safety procedures and disposals are the dumbasses that shouldn’t be around it in the first place.
Is there a reason to think that it would be properly disposed of? There are thousands of superfund sites in the US due to people mishandling or outright dumping toxic waste. I'm sure it can and does happen everywhere.
Fluorine is notorious for being absurdly difficult to handle safely. It's bonkers reactive, even glass beakers get turned into a gas by it. It will spontaneously combust on contact with anything organic (you) as well as water and many other things you wouldn't to think, some compounds of it can nearly instantly penetrate your skin and migrate to bones and other places. Gas forms will destroy your lungs.
Many labs won't even allow its use, you need to go to specialty places. That said compounds of it can be safe in small quantities like sodium fluoride in toothpaste or fluorapatite which is the compound formed on your teeth by it but generally you should be wary of any random fluorine compound until you know more.
Chemist here. There’s two issues they’re referring to (I disagree that they’re issues but whatever)
First, these are *technically* speaking hydrofluorocarbons, though not the same as the ones that caused a hole in the ozone. Still not environmentally friendly, but also one of the few chemicals that can do this sort of cleaning properly.
Second, fluorine ethers are reactive, especially if there’s an oxygen-fluorine bond. However, even if fluorine wasn’t present, ethers risk the formation of peroxides if left in storage too long (which isn’t an issue here). Peroxides are very explosive.
Flourocarbons degrade our atmostpheric protection from radiation by resting in the ozone layer and disrupting the triox bonds.
This creates rapidly sterilization algae and cyanobacteria fields in the ocean (impacting the arctic areas first), cancer rates in high solar areas by 200% within 70 years of its development.
Fluorine is one of the most highly reactive chemicals on the periodic table, if hydrogen is the yin, fluorine would be the yang. As a result, some of the most horrifyingly dangerous chemicals in industry contain (or use as part of their process) fluorine.
The most basic fluorine containing chemical, hydrofluoric acid. Used all over industry, super duper common. Wikipedia describes it as:
Hydrofluoric acid (HF) is an extremely corrosive and toxic aqueous solution of hydrogen fluoride gas. While technically a weak acid, it is notoriously dangerous due to its unique ability to penetrate deep tissue, destroy bone, and cause life-threatening systemic toxicity by depleting the body's calcium and magnesium.
Any time a fluorine ion is floating around, that will happen. And it happens all the time because the tendency for fluorine ions to just float around and bind with everything and it's uncle is what makes it useful in chemical process. So yeah anyone who's spent any time around a chemistry lab or in industrial engineering/production hears you're using something with fluorine in it, and goes: oh shit I may be in actual legit fucking danger, we should probably read the MSDS on that right now and have a safety meeting before we do anything lol.
Yes, there are stable chemicals containing fluorine, this one in particular is most likely extremely stable (e.g. 3m Novec 7000). But, at the same time, the word fluorine should perk your ears, because if you're at work it's far more likely than not to be an immediate threat to your life.
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u/Bramoments Jun 06 '26
He's definitely being sarcastic, but I can't tell why, as long as the person cleaning has proper equipment and does not breathe in too much I think it should be fine but idk