[Sca-cooks] A Warning Was Cleaning Metal

[Christiane]

Thanks Bear!
>Mixing the two types of chlorine for swimming pools can 
>produce explosive reactions and release interesting levels of chlorine gas 
>according to a friend of mine who does maintanence at apartment complexes.

Apparently that's what happened in Princeton.

>Ammonia and chlorine bleach produce chloramine gas, an unstable mixture of 
>nitrogen and chlorine which, in the presence of water, reduces to ammonia 
>and hypochlorous or hydrochloric acid.  The instability makes chloramine gas 
>very nasty stuff to inhale.

So that's the stuff I was breathing in after I accidentally sprayed a bleach-containing cleaner on top of the Pine-Sol in my bathtub ... That was not fun! 
>
>Vinegar and chlorine bleach would tend to break down into water, oxygen, and 
>sodium chloride with a small amount of chlorine escaping as gas. 
>Irritating, unhealthy, but probably not lethal.

What about vinegar and ammonia?

Gianotta (who had to watch a lot of film strips in high school chem class because the teacher was too afraid a student would accidentally gas the lab during a bench experiment)