Personal Story time:

When I was 4, my family was stationed at Nellis and lived in a cheap apartment complex off post in Las Vegas. A friend of mine were outside playing and eventually got into a rock fight (slinging handfuls of pebbles at each other and having a great time, no lawyers involved back then) with two girls. Eventually, we got tired of carrying around fistfuls of rocks and needed something to carry them in as we ran around the apartments. Somewhere I found a bottle of plumbers solution. I don't remember emptying it out, but being 4 I probably dumped half of it on me. We started chasing the girls around again and stopped to ask one of their dad's if he knew which way they went.. and my skin started to itch. I looked down and my skin was bright red. The itching became insane and I started to scream as I ran home. On the the way, my favorite Oscar the Grouch jersey shirt melted and by the time my little legs got me home it was really bad. My parents were taking a nap/having a nooner when I got home and asked me what happened-all I could tell them was that I slid off the monkey bars because I didn't understand what was happening. They say I was bubbling/sizzling, but I don't remember that part-I might have been in shock

My mom is a pretty smart lady and threw me in the bathtub along with all the baking soda she had while my dad went out to find out what happened. The other girl's dad met up with him and gave him the bottle, it had Sulphuric Acid as the main ingredient. They bundled me up and left my sisters with a neighbor and tore off across the desert to get me to the hospital-I don't remember if they took me to Nellis or someplace local, Nellis would have been a much longer drive but I remember the hospital like it was yesterday. I remember the doc, the lighting, the smell of the burn cream. God I hated that stuff.... I spent the next 4 months with bandages on my chest and leg having to swap them out and reapply the cream. It really sucked.

The burn was probably 30-40 of my chest/stomach area, and shrank gradually over the recovery period. Between catching the burn quickly, treating it with the baking soda, and being young with very young skin, my scar is only 3/4x1-1/2" today and the one on my leg is dime sized. Got some real funky hair growth out of the bigger one..

The actual burn when I was being eaten went something like: tingle, itch here and there, Hmm, I should probably scratch that, Ouch!, (look down) Holy Shit!,  and by the time I took the 30-40 second run home my muscles were visible. I can't imagine what it must be like to be one of these women who got hit with 100% solution. In my case it took a few minutes for me to even know that I got it on me but when it went to work, holy hell it went fast.

Acid is not fun at all.  You were pretty lucky.

Cripes!

Hell, I got a single drop of something like 6-molar nitric acid on me and that stung like hell. I'd hate to feel concentrated acid, especially as a little kid. Lucky you didn't get it in your eyes.

On the other hand, I've spilled a lot of low-molarity hydrochloric on me and, once it was washed off, no big deal.

Your story scares the shit out of me as I read it from the perspective of a dad.

+1 To that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I got a few drops of concentrated nitric acid on my leg once.  I was able to wash it off within ten seconds, but it still left a deep burn that took about two months to fully heal (leaving a scar, of course).  There was a big, thick, dry scab that was actually dead skin.

I also got a drop of sulfuric on my arm one time.  It took longer to notice, but then I felt a stinging and itching, and saw that there was a deep red raised bump with some sort of liquid on my arm.  I rinsed it off, and fortunately it was just a superficial burn that healed quickly.

I have been in a few industrial environments ( plating shops ) and have seen 1st hand what nitric acid can do to metal.

I would rather be drug by my balls until death than have full strength acid tossed into my face.

Don't take your kids to Las Vegas... it wasn't the first time I went to the hospital. I got bit by a ghost spider and puked/hallucinated all the way to Nellis, only to find that they were doing exercises and we had to drive all the way around the base to go thru a certain gate because they were locked down!

OH, forgot about where the acid came from: it was a janitor for the apartment complex who left it out. The owner was scared shitless that we would sue, I got flowers daily for a while...

I can honestly say that I have never wanted to know what it is like to be burned by acid, and now I really don't want to know what it's like to be burned by acid.

I dumped HCL or Nitric from a sample bottle down my arm several years ago. Damn that hurt.  I was several yards for any structure and started toward the nearest building.   When I got to the building the only water source I saw was a filthy toilet.  I almost stuck my arm into a dirty toilet to wash it off.  Luckily someone saw what happened and ran over with a eye wash bottle which helped until I could get to the eye wash/ emergency shower.

Just the other day I got some pirahna (concentrated hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid) on my finger.  I didn't even notice because it was a small amount, and the stuff is such a strong oxidizer that it fully reacted with the dead skin cells on the surface of my hand before it could get to the important bits and so there was no pain response or real damage.  





I had a large white patch of skin, sort of like a burn you would get touching something that white-hot, where the flesh is seared.  White spot was gone by dinner time; the "burned" skin pretty much turned to dust leaving only healthy skin behind.
Needless to say, I pay more attention to that stuff, even when it's only a small amount of residue on my glove.





ETA:  Oh, and FYI, do not smell unknown liquids.  Sometimes they turn out to be concentrated hydrochloric acid.  

I had 14M nitric acid get spilled on me in my college chem lab. Still have a scar on my arm. Didn't hurt to bad. Scared the shit out of me though.

Man, that was lucky.... How bad was the burn???

It feels very burny.

my boat had a dead battery anchored out about 25 yards out, so I put the battery up on my shoulder and walked it in to land.  I was getting moved around quite a bit by waves and the uneven floor.  the contents of the battery sloshed onto my arm and neck.  Ive gotten the contents of a battery on my hands before, but it never really fucked with me.  this time, it got into a cut I had on my arm that was partially healed and instantly ate it open wide and made it gush blood like a motherfucker.  It hurt so bad I dropped the battery and went under water to rinse off.  off topic, but I salvaged the battery.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=1085562

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=1086353

I was stacking used golf cart batteries on a skid so that we could send them back for the core charge. Got lazy and grabbed one by the plastic handle-fucking handle broke and the battery dropped to the ground. I just *barely* avoided getting covered in acid in quantity, but the pants and shirt I was wearing must have gotten enough mist on them that they pretty much disintegrated in the wash. I was very fucking lucky.

I had acid from the batteries on an M106 make some pinholes in a set of BDU's - battery acid isn't really that strong.

I've also gotten acid from car batteries on my a couple of times - doesn't even leave a mark if you wash it off your skin quickly.

4 year old out running around and your folks were sleeping?

I do ndt inspections of chemical storage tanks for a living, this includes confined space entries into acid tanks. yes we take every precaution, but the only ones that scare me are the (HF) hydrofluoric acid tanks. i dread being anywhere near that crap. hcl - no big deal, sulfuric - keep your head on straight, nitric - it could be a bad day, HF - ahhha hell, can't they find somebody else ?

this happened a few years back;

i was in the area doing an inspection and had to help the area operator who was disconnecting a 98% sulfuric acid line get to a safety shower. he didn't bleed off the pressure before disconnecting it, and it sprayed him all over, I only got hit across the legs. this was the result of less then 20 steps from the safety shower. I was wearing full length blue jeans, and was holding him under the shower, so most of it got washed off, luckily, he had on a face shield and his hard hat, but he still got burned badly.

I had a lead acid battery explosion, about 18 inches from my face. Took a good amount of acid in my eyes, nose, both ears, and also a chunk of plastic battery case got shoved into my eyebALL, slashed the eyelid, and pierced the cornea.
  instantly 100 percent blinded, ears ringing,  I groped around for a while,  disoriented,  sorta panicky,  found the door,  made it into the bathroom, and got The water going, started  trying to flush my face, and  then dug the big  chunk of plastic OUT OF MY EYE...
    That is where I almost lost it, got the wicked stomach ache, low blood pressure, vertigo,thought I was going down on the floor, but I held onto the sink, and  kept flushing the eyes.
   After 5 minutes or so, one of my eyes started working  a little bit, fuzzy, but enough to go find some saline  eye wash solution.... I started saline wash down, and went to get my truck started.
winter, maybe minus 5 degrees, so it  takes a few minutes to get  the  diesel warm enough to drive to hospital...
    by this time, co-worker who heard the explosion, but was busy running a cutting torch for a bit,  finished his  cut, turned off his gas bottles, coiled up the hoses, etc, he finally  comes up front, realizes the immediate nature of my problem, drives me up to emergency room.    I keep a steady stream going from the saline bottle,  still hurts like a bitch..
  after a couple hours, the ER crew finishes hosing out my eyes, and locates a surgeon up the road, about 2 hours drive, so wife drives me up to meet this WIZARD eye doctor, who actually SEWED my eyeball back together.  sewed up the eyelid too, while he was at it.
amazing, sewed my eye up, manually, by hand.

so, my eye is fixed, pretty much, looks funny, like it has dual pupils,but works   mostly alright.
Doc only charged about $9,000  not really that expensive, considering how cool eyes are....
...I am real fond of EYE protection now,  wear safety glasses much of the time.

I worked for a company that had HF Acid running thru pipes along the columns and beams around the building. One of these pipes ran along out loading door where a truck driver was getting out if his cab. At that same time a Hi-Lo (that would be a forklift to you clean fingernailed motherfuckers) slid on oil at an intersection (this was a stamping plant) and hit a column two bays away hard enough to make the pipe fail right next to where the trucker was getting out of his truck. I don't know how bad he got fucked up because I didn't work there at the time but DAMN I hope my old employer paid thru their ass for that bullshit. It was the most unsafe place I ever worked... My worst day had me dangling from an oily hydraulic line on a vertical tube bender, 25 feet in the air and nothing but a full drip tray underneath me. The tube bender was designed to lay flat on the floor but they needed floor space so they put them upright to save room-the only problem was that as hydraulic pressure bled off the ram would swing away sometimes-I was too new to know this and it took my ladder out from under me.

HF can kill the fuck out of you by cardiac arrest if you get enough. It also basically goes right through your skin and starts etching your bones. Scary, scary shit that I wouldn't care to work with.

friend got 2molar HCL or H2SO4 on her hand during lab(she had gloves on)  it started itching and she noticed the bump.  It ate through the glove, she just rinsed it off really well and got back to work, still has a scar but it was such a small amount and she rinsed it off immediatly it didnt do any deep damage.

Yup. It has an affinity for calcium.

that it does, when we work around it, we cary a bottle of flushing soultion, and a tube of calcium glutamate (sp), if you even think that you get any on you, you wash it with the flushing soultion, and apply the CG on the way to the nurse station and first aid room

I had one of those frickin' aliens wedge itself in the door of the APC, and I had to hit it point blank with a short barreled 12ga.  The acid splatter ate right through my hybrid composite armor and burned me pretty badly.  I hate those damn things!

not a acid

so really you haven't felt the pain of acid

I'm sure getting burned by acid is no fun.

What's at least as bad and possibly worse is white phosphorous.

I read an account once of an American soldier in Vietnam who (as a result of an accident) had a WP grenade explode in his face.

He died - very, very badly - in a few minutes, while his comrades stood by helpless because there wasn't anything they could do for him.

I piss HF

He was four, I bet the recollection is very poor at this point.  My guess is some sort of pool chemical or maybe even the acid washes they used to use clean coils on A/C units.  If the recollection was that baking soda worked, then his recollection that it was plumber's solution is probably off.  Go with the macro details versus the micro details.



 

There are some Lye based solutions ––but they are usually powder or crystalline in nature.
red devil lye from the hardware store is the most common. In the slums girls used to use it as a
disfiguring weapon against more attractive rivals.
the old style plumbers solution was usually full strength sulfuric acid.  These days the commonly found
stuff (liquid plumber etc ) is some form of bleach or a lye solution. The sulfuric acid types are still available at plumbing supply
stores and some hardware places under such names as "mule kick" or "hot shot". When the plastic bottle is sold in a double plastic bag
overwrap with the skull and cross bones right on the front you are dealing with some serious shit. Yet people will crack it open with no
gloves or eye protection and pour it down the sink.

You can buy the Sulfuric acid plumbing stuff here in FL at home depot. Comes in a bottle in a double bag and feels like liquid lead.

I've gotten that way too. Went without(even had them in the car but didn't want to go get them) and had an empy .45 case eject right to my eye. rude surprise but luckily no damage. Safety glasses stay on now.

It was pretty smart of your mom to do what she did, I'm sure it kept you from being burned worse than you were.

Believe me, it was Good Old Sulphuric Acid. My parents always described it as plumbers solution, but it definitely was H2SO4.. Remember, this was in the early/mid 1970's.

At the time she was studying to be an Icthyologist, so she had had some chem classes. Momma ain't no dummy, that's for sure.. She's a bit of a libtard, but she's a civil libertarian for the most part.

did you have to get the calcium shots in the effected area, straight to the bone ? i've not been burned by hf yet, and i hope i never do, but they say in the safety meetings, this is part of the cure for a bad burn ...

I also work in plants which make phosphoric acid, and inspect tanks full of phosphorus ... they have bath tubs full of water for you to jump in and submerge it so it stops burning. you have to wear the reflective fire suits when in the area, but I'm convinced that these are just so they have something to send home to your wife. fun fun fun, these are the things I don't tell my wife

Sulfuric acid vs. sugar:  Very interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqDHwd9rG0s



 

I've never been burned by acid, but I accidentally used toilet bowl cleaner to clean my shower one time (we had a bottle that was all-purpose and one that was straight toilet bowl cleaner, and they looked the same and I grabbed the wrong one).

The resulting gas burned my eyes, nose, throat and lungs and took a full 13-14 hours to clear out with the bathroom fans running, shower on, and a box fan set up inside. Fuckin' sucked.

Organic chemistry lab, cleaning the polymerized crap out of a round bottom flask...oops a drop of concetrated sulfuric on my finger.  Instant burn, instant hell.  I was at a sink with running water and immediately put my finger in it and washed it off.  Still got a nice blister.  Looked like I burned myself cooking for a few days.

Not too bad. The area was red and irritated.  Even thought there wasn't much damage it was painful.

I got sprayed in the face when I walked through a pin hole leak of 98% sulfuric at work and let me tell ya the pain was instant and severe. I had on chem. goggles and it left a perfect outline of the goggle on my face. I discovered a new respect for acid.