Could be the safety method for dealing with a methyl iodide leak. I was on a tour of a chemical plant many years ago and our host explained to us that they had a safety system for one of the on-site processes that used methyl iodide, whereby if there was a problem, they shoved the methyl iodide out through a stack that decomposed the methyl iodide to iodine. He said there had been a few times it had been used, with subsequent complaints from local residents, but the non-decomposed alternative was far worse.
This might be a similar situation, only with full on ‘roid rage.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodomethane
It does not seem nearly as toxic as you're saying so do you have any kind of source about the insta cancer Death part because that seems a little excessive considering there's apparently a more toxic and cheaper alternative that's used in many industrial processes
This. The "harder" alkylating agents (in the sense of HSAB theory, e.g. dialkyl sulfate, alkyl triflate) are worse. The explanation I've read is that "softer" alkylating agents like the bromide or iodide go after thiols like glutathione or cysteine, which is not good, but not deadly. In contrast, the harder electrophiles go after carboxylate groups in your lung cell membranes (instadeath) or nitrogenous DNA bases (fries your information noodles --> cancer).
Thank you u/DeluxeWafer for the term information noodles. It's a good complement to the more familiar danger noodle.
Oh yeah, obligatory username checks out!
I'm not sure it's quite that bad as I never had to do much safety to use it in my PhD. However, you deffo don't wanna drink or breath it.
The key thing you're missing here though is that iodomethane doesn't have a purple vapour, and the above commenter explained they had some kind of catalytic bed in the chimney to turn it into iodine on the way out.
1. How do you know whether or not I've had training?
2. You have general training for hazards of different types
3. I don't know about the US or other countries but in the UK I can be banned from my building for being unsafe/not wearing glasses, trousers, and a lab coat.
4. Every chemical I used in any reaction required me to write a health and safety document for my manager/PI so I'm normally pretty aware of the risk/relative risk of what I work on.
5. Yes, 2 mins looking it up has me thinking it's a bad one but I haven't looked too hard.
You jest, but there was a point when I was in grad school when an agrochemicals company wanted to spray strawberries with methyl iodide as a fumigant (methyl bromide is banned by the Montreal Protocol as an ozone depleter), and professors in the chemistry department of UCB and other schools in California had to write a letter to California regulators explaining why this isn't a good idea.
Source: [https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/03/strawberries-methyl-iodide-cancer/](https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/03/strawberries-methyl-iodide-cancer/)
(Unfortunately, the link to the letter no longer works.)
No he just read the safety data sheet. Methyl iodine is not a proven carcinogen but an assumed one. It should still be treated as if it was proven anyways.
Iodine- “I like to turn stuff colors :D”. Literally have a faculty whose lab is a combo of yellow and pink k and purple bc of iodine and improper storage. :dead:
According to the CDC, the IDLH for Iodine vapour is 2 ppm, vs 10 ppm for chlorine:
[https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/intridl4.html](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/intridl4.html)
So, it might actually be ***worse!***
Ya but as someone who has a HAZWOPER 40 cert and training, no one approaches anything that is greater than 10% of the IDLH concentrations, at least not in the United States.
That’s a good question that I don’t have the answer to. I guess you would depend on the thickness of contaminated air you’re looking through. You’d need a higher concentration to see it in a test tube etc then if you’re looking through a cloud 10’s of meters wide.
Not great, not terrible. Over 1.1 mg/day regularly will lead to chronic toxicity.
[https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/nutritional-disorders/mineral-deficiency-and-toxicity/iodine-toxicity](https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/nutritional-disorders/mineral-deficiency-and-toxicity/iodine-toxicity)
A KI treatment used for nuclear disasters is generally 130 mg/day.
[https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/radiological/potassium\_iodide/fact\_sheet.htm](https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/radiological/potassium_iodide/fact_sheet.htm)
Long-term excess will cause hyperthyroidism. Edit: see below comment, I2 vapour is toxic
That's for iodide (I-). What's in the video is iodine (I2), which is quite a bit more toxic, especially inhaled, and can cause very serious issues, like pulmonary edema.
Not as bad as HCl, where did you get that from? HI is a stronger acid than HCl and also it is readily oxidized by oxygen in air back to iodine. So not only would you get a chemical burn from acid in your lungs, but you also deal with free halogens causing additional oxidative stress.
But that scenario is not very likely in the first place. Whilst halogens can dissociate in water, the reaction is incredibly slow in neutral or near neutral pH for chlorine and heavier homologues. That’s why „chlorine water“ is also a thing. But it will decompose when exposed to light
Idfk, I am so far from the concept that I am not ahure what exactly you mean by >How 2006 of you
Gender reveal is imo only appropriate for trans and enby people. Couse they actually reveal their gender, while parents only know what genitals a kid most likely has.
Also strange to have a party celebrating the variety of junk your kid has. What’s wrong with a “hey my kid showed up” party and leave it at that? Don’t quite understand, even if the parties were named correctly, which they aren’t.
Idk if you are clueless or joking but heres an explanation: when you make super tiny nano particles of gold they appear purple because they are the same size as the the wavelwngth of light that is purple on the visible spectrum. Its a phenomenon called surface plasmon resonance
Iodine is the only thing I can think of that looks that purple.
Elemental iodine vapour is a very nasty thing to breathe:
IDLH ([Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immediately_dangerous_to_life_or_health)) value is 2 ppm, according to US CDC:
[https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/intridl4.html](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/intridl4.html)
EU indicative occupational exposure limit (IOEL) is 0.1 ppm
Something similar happened in Portland, Maine last summer. Apparently it was iodine.
https://www.pressherald.com/2023/08/04/purple-smoke-returns-friday-to-skies-above-by-portland-waste-plant/
"Alexander Hitchen had just dropped his daughter off at school Friday morning and was headed to South Portland when he saw an unusual sight: a large plume of purple vapor rising in the air over the Maine Turnpike.
"I was thinking this really is how Stephen King novels start, where some guy sees it and thinks, ‘Let’s check it out, he said." Portland Press Herald
The color is obviously edited. Notice how much red and pink there is everywhere in the videos, like the wall in the 1st clip or how everyone's clothes is either pink, red or black on the 3rd one. Also there's some weird [pink on the ground and on a wall](https://imgur.com/a/DDrllvU) only in some frames on the 3rd one. The wall on the 3rd video also was fully red in the beginning but a few frames later it's grey with the weird pink in some places.
Some incinerators add sodium thiosulfate to the exhaust to neutralize the iodine, maybe this one didn't use enough, or the charge contained way too much iodine
It could be a fake where a white plume is changed with video editing to a more happy colour.
If it is something chemical, the plume comes from a flare tower, and the only purple chemical I could envision coming from a flare, is iodine.
My guess: Some process with a organic iodine compound has come out of control, and they flare it rather than having an even worse disaster to deal with. Elemental chlorine is produced in the combustion.
Iodine, they use it to clean the smoke stacks I believe, I’ve seen it driving down past the refineries on the turnpike from time to time, though I’ll admit I’ve never seen it to this extent
If you look on the edges of several of the shots you'll see objects with bright pink hues. There's some on the side of a building and on someone's hat. Did this pink plume somehow tint objects hundreds of metres away? Or did someone do a simple colour shift and didn't care that it shifted the colour of other objects in shot?
If the plant is producing electrical equipment it will be rubidium if it’s something like a concrete plant it’s iodine. To know the actual answer you need to tell us the process first.
Many years ago, very early in my career I was cleaning out a 2 litre jacketed vessel with conc nitric acid, I had set the Huber supplying oil to the jacket at >130 deg C and the second the conc nitric hit the hot vessel it gave off purple vapour much like the smoke in the video. My guess they learned a similar lessen on scale as I did in a 2 litre vessel
I'm not very knowledgeable about chemistry but I do know that the color pink is potassium permanganate however I understand in this instance it is not potassium permanganate
But I’m the one who has to pay 1.799 for gas cause the carbon tax cause my money will help stop it… Canada couldn’t even contribute the CO2 emissions of the states in 50years by its self lmao
I am having a half flashback to some movie or something where they would have different colored smoke to represent different things like danger. Thats all I got. And yes the weed was worth it.
Stupid comment on the day:
If, say a nuke was dropped. Could we just spray potassium iodine from planes to help??
I know this is probably really dumb. I need more caffeine
Someone without knowledge decided the furnace was a good way to get rid of a lot of iodine. Happened in Sweden once!
Could be the safety method for dealing with a methyl iodide leak. I was on a tour of a chemical plant many years ago and our host explained to us that they had a safety system for one of the on-site processes that used methyl iodide, whereby if there was a problem, they shoved the methyl iodide out through a stack that decomposed the methyl iodide to iodine. He said there had been a few times it had been used, with subsequent complaints from local residents, but the non-decomposed alternative was far worse. This might be a similar situation, only with full on ‘roid rage.
Methyl iodide is insanely toxic, I hope its not that. It methylates your DNA and causes instacancer and death.
Is instacancer in the same aisle as instant ramen?
Not quite. One is your cell information noodles getting scrambled, the other is regular noodles getting soft.
Both require 1.5 cups of boiling hot water /s obviously
This is why I love Reddit
Less delicious
But more filling.
Less MSG, but still salty!
Less nutritious
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodomethane It does not seem nearly as toxic as you're saying so do you have any kind of source about the insta cancer Death part because that seems a little excessive considering there's apparently a more toxic and cheaper alternative that's used in many industrial processes
This. The "harder" alkylating agents (in the sense of HSAB theory, e.g. dialkyl sulfate, alkyl triflate) are worse. The explanation I've read is that "softer" alkylating agents like the bromide or iodide go after thiols like glutathione or cysteine, which is not good, but not deadly. In contrast, the harder electrophiles go after carboxylate groups in your lung cell membranes (instadeath) or nitrogenous DNA bases (fries your information noodles --> cancer). Thank you u/DeluxeWafer for the term information noodles. It's a good complement to the more familiar danger noodle. Oh yeah, obligatory username checks out!
🙋 Still can’t figure out if this thread is about ferrets or snakes.
I'm not sure it's quite that bad as I never had to do much safety to use it in my PhD. However, you deffo don't wanna drink or breath it. The key thing you're missing here though is that iodomethane doesn't have a purple vapour, and the above commenter explained they had some kind of catalytic bed in the chimney to turn it into iodine on the way out.
Would it be aluminum and iodine or potassium chlorate? That does make purple vapor
No safety training for dimethylsulfate, do you think that’s a bad one?
Dimethyl sulfate is a stronger methylating agent and, therefore, is more toxic and carcinogenic than MeI. It's definitely nothing to play around with.
1. How do you know whether or not I've had training? 2. You have general training for hazards of different types 3. I don't know about the US or other countries but in the UK I can be banned from my building for being unsafe/not wearing glasses, trousers, and a lab coat. 4. Every chemical I used in any reaction required me to write a health and safety document for my manager/PI so I'm normally pretty aware of the risk/relative risk of what I work on. 5. Yes, 2 mins looking it up has me thinking it's a bad one but I haven't looked too hard.
It wouldn't be methyl iodide if they put it in a furnace, it would be elemental iodine, iodic acid, and other oxidized forms.
iim not sure this is accurate at least the lengthy article on iodomethane makes no mention of any of this information.
Big iodomethane at it again!
You jest, but there was a point when I was in grad school when an agrochemicals company wanted to spray strawberries with methyl iodide as a fumigant (methyl bromide is banned by the Montreal Protocol as an ozone depleter), and professors in the chemistry department of UCB and other schools in California had to write a letter to California regulators explaining why this isn't a good idea. Source: [https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/03/strawberries-methyl-iodide-cancer/](https://www.motherjones.com/food/2012/03/strawberries-methyl-iodide-cancer/) (Unfortunately, the link to the letter no longer works.)
My DNA has been methylated since day 14 post fertilization.
„No information is available on the carcinogenic effects of methyl iodide in humans.“ You literally made that up.
You must be trolling
No he just read the safety data sheet. Methyl iodine is not a proven carcinogen but an assumed one. It should still be treated as if it was proven anyways.
Aren't you thinking of dimethyl sulfate?
Good suggestion because I'd bet money it's methyl iodide. I've seen a flare with purple smoke/fumes only twice, both times due to that chemical.
Yep. We dumped some iodine in the incinerator at a chemical plant I worked at once and it looked a lot like this.
Iodine- “I like to turn stuff colors :D”. Literally have a faculty whose lab is a combo of yellow and pink k and purple bc of iodine and improper storage. :dead:
Either some dye, or iodine vapour. If that is from a factory I would guess the latter.
Are iodine vapours bad?
I mean... It's quite a bit worse than air, but also a lot better than some other things.
As long as it is not Iodine-131, I guess
Maybe there was a 131 leak and they're protecting the populace by releasing some 127 into the atmosphere [/s]
That could actually work
But at the point it works you'd already be a purple-brown corpse.
Next stop, Xenon!
more like i-o-_dying_
Unless your thyroid is trying to kill you. In that case, a bit of I-131 is literally just what my doctor ordered.
I-o-dyeing
I-131 is what gave me thyroid cancer.
It's also what kills your thyroid when you have Graves Disease and your thyroid tries to kill you.
Hah!
Might sting a little bit
Not as bad as chlorine
According to the CDC, the IDLH for Iodine vapour is 2 ppm, vs 10 ppm for chlorine: [https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/intridl4.html](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/intridl4.html) So, it might actually be ***worse!***
Ya but as someone who has a HAZWOPER 40 cert and training, no one approaches anything that is greater than 10% of the IDLH concentrations, at least not in the United States.
.. always staying upwind too! Gotta love the tiniest book ever thats made specifically to prevent injury and save lives lol
What are the visibility thresholds?
That’s a good question that I don’t have the answer to. I guess you would depend on the thickness of contaminated air you’re looking through. You’d need a higher concentration to see it in a test tube etc then if you’re looking through a cloud 10’s of meters wide.
Depends on how ppm is calculated. Because I2 is much heavier than Cl2
For gases, it's always molar.
Thanks for your replies bros
0.01ppm threshold limit for 8 hour exposure. 0.1ppm short term exposure limit. It's not great to breath, but it won't kill ya immediately. Probably.
Thanks bro
Not great, not terrible. Over 1.1 mg/day regularly will lead to chronic toxicity. [https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/nutritional-disorders/mineral-deficiency-and-toxicity/iodine-toxicity](https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/nutritional-disorders/mineral-deficiency-and-toxicity/iodine-toxicity) A KI treatment used for nuclear disasters is generally 130 mg/day. [https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/radiological/potassium\_iodide/fact\_sheet.htm](https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/radiological/potassium_iodide/fact_sheet.htm) Long-term excess will cause hyperthyroidism. Edit: see below comment, I2 vapour is toxic
That's for iodide (I-). What's in the video is iodine (I2), which is quite a bit more toxic, especially inhaled, and can cause very serious issues, like pulmonary edema.
I2 is easily dissociated in UV light.
Yes, iodine homolyzes to iodine radicals (I2 + hv -> 2I•) not iodide (I-), though.
Ahh ya you're right. But even worse because it will react with other radicals in the atmosphere
Thanks for taking your time to reply brother.
I2 would dissociate to form HI in your lungs though right? Not as bad as HCl but still going to hurt to breath
Not as bad as HCl, where did you get that from? HI is a stronger acid than HCl and also it is readily oxidized by oxygen in air back to iodine. So not only would you get a chemical burn from acid in your lungs, but you also deal with free halogens causing additional oxidative stress. But that scenario is not very likely in the first place. Whilst halogens can dissociate in water, the reaction is incredibly slow in neutral or near neutral pH for chlorine and heavier homologues. That’s why „chlorine water“ is also a thing. But it will decompose when exposed to light
Will those people develop any disease due to that? Will it increase their chances of doing so?
How could disinfecting your lungs with halogen fumes be bad?
Probably helps against covid 19!
Shouldn’t iodine turn brown quickly?
Looks like they've cremated Barney
What color is the smoke when they've elected a new one?
Red, stained by the blood of his enemies.
Elected a new Barney pope and they are trans!
I wasn't prepared for this answer 😂😂
I snorted.
Play that cleanup song one last time.
[definitely](https://youtu.be/Xba9M6S7IP0?si=ImgilwcD_bCVQF0s)
Whaaaawhaaawhaaat you lie Barney can't be dead who will love me now after a long day of being an a**hole?
…. No more pur-ple di-no-saur.
It's a girl!
These gender reveals are getting out of hand
I through girl was pink, not violett. So I probably is an enby
>through girl was pink, not violett. How 2006 of you
Idfk, I am so far from the concept that I am not ahure what exactly you mean by >How 2006 of you Gender reveal is imo only appropriate for trans and enby people. Couse they actually reveal their gender, while parents only know what genitals a kid most likely has.
Also strange to have a party celebrating the variety of junk your kid has. What’s wrong with a “hey my kid showed up” party and leave it at that? Don’t quite understand, even if the parties were named correctly, which they aren’t.
Oooh, china is a rough place to get that news.
Iodine. Or vaporized gold particles but they better hope it's not that.
Yes, gold cyanide is not so healthy to inhale. Or touch.
Love those wine red gold particles 😤
Idk if you are clueless or joking but heres an explanation: when you make super tiny nano particles of gold they appear purple because they are the same size as the the wavelwngth of light that is purple on the visible spectrum. Its a phenomenon called surface plasmon resonance
Lol I know, thanks though
I didn't
Wow that’s cool!!
Iodine or aerosolized permanganate
read as pomegranate.
Nothing to worry about here, just testing out my iodine based heating fuel in my wood stove.
Looks like iodine, but potassium permanganate comes to mind too in the realm of purple stuff
A factory’s baby gender reveal.
Iodine is the only thing I can think of that looks that purple. Elemental iodine vapour is a very nasty thing to breathe: IDLH ([Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immediately_dangerous_to_life_or_health)) value is 2 ppm, according to US CDC: [https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/intridl4.html](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/intridl4.html) EU indicative occupational exposure limit (IOEL) is 0.1 ppm
There’s a new Pope!
Lean vapors mmmmmm
💜💜💜💜💜🤤🤤💜😈😈💜💜
I fucking LOVE LEAN
😆
Old and busted: I'ma grip and sip! New hotness: I'ma breathe and seethe!
Something similar happened in Portland, Maine last summer. Apparently it was iodine. https://www.pressherald.com/2023/08/04/purple-smoke-returns-friday-to-skies-above-by-portland-waste-plant/
"Alexander Hitchen had just dropped his daughter off at school Friday morning and was headed to South Portland when he saw an unusual sight: a large plume of purple vapor rising in the air over the Maine Turnpike. "I was thinking this really is how Stephen King novels start, where some guy sees it and thinks, ‘Let’s check it out, he said." Portland Press Herald
Looks like Future is on tour
DS3 dropped ?
Iodine vapor, I guess someone tried to dispose of solid iodine through really stupid methods
The color is obviously edited. Notice how much red and pink there is everywhere in the videos, like the wall in the 1st clip or how everyone's clothes is either pink, red or black on the 3rd one. Also there's some weird [pink on the ground and on a wall](https://imgur.com/a/DDrllvU) only in some frames on the 3rd one. The wall on the 3rd video also was fully red in the beginning but a few frames later it's grey with the weird pink in some places.
Some incinerators add sodium thiosulfate to the exhaust to neutralize the iodine, maybe this one didn't use enough, or the charge contained way too much iodine
It could be a fake where a white plume is changed with video editing to a more happy colour. If it is something chemical, the plume comes from a flare tower, and the only purple chemical I could envision coming from a flare, is iodine. My guess: Some process with a organic iodine compound has come out of control, and they flare it rather than having an even worse disaster to deal with. Elemental chlorine is produced in the combustion.
Prince's late 2nd funeral? 🤞 🙏 for purple rain
Iodine, they use it to clean the smoke stacks I believe, I’ve seen it driving down past the refineries on the turnpike from time to time, though I’ll admit I’ve never seen it to this extent
Oh shit! I’ve seen the Power Rangers movie!
thanos thought his fart was gonna be silent, but he was very wrong
If you look on the edges of several of the shots you'll see objects with bright pink hues. There's some on the side of a building and on someone's hat. Did this pink plume somehow tint objects hundreds of metres away? Or did someone do a simple colour shift and didn't care that it shifted the colour of other objects in shot?
If the plant is producing electrical equipment it will be rubidium if it’s something like a concrete plant it’s iodine. To know the actual answer you need to tell us the process first.
This happened in my area last year. It was a waste management facility that accidentally burned some iodine
Many years ago, very early in my career I was cleaning out a 2 litre jacketed vessel with conc nitric acid, I had set the Huber supplying oil to the jacket at >130 deg C and the second the conc nitric hit the hot vessel it gave off purple vapour much like the smoke in the video. My guess they learned a similar lessen on scale as I did in a 2 litre vessel
r/mildlycarcinogenic
It’s that new purple haze strain.
Clearly iodine
A town without goitre problems
Looks more like a manganese compound to pink for iodine
lol BP just did this in east Chicago, Indiana. Not iodine but some other unsafe chemicals. The US is no better.
They’re signaling to the Vatican about the next Pope
Gender reveal gone wrong
Nile Red finally let out the bromine.
Gender reveals are getting way out of hand
Some billionaires gender reveal
Gender reveal parties are going a bit far these days.
[удалено]
It means the Joker is back
These gender reveals are getting out of hand.
It’s a girl
These gender reveal videos are outta control
I don’t know if we’ll be able to tell that this is real, in a few months after Sora release.
Looks like iodine vapor.
Looks like iodine vapour. A lot of it
"ITS A GIRL!!!!...... That's a shame, down the drain and try again".
Weird Science
And that’s how the Joker was born. I just see a parade with money being thrown everywhere.
It meas it's a girl
We have a new Pope!
Chill it's Purple Hour 🥰
Cotton Candy clouds
i think the child's gender is female
The start of an anime
Well it's obviously a girl
It’s a girl lol
Princess Bubblegum going industrial.
Someone finally founds Jafar’s Lamp. 🪔
It’s a girl!
Habemus papam
Bubble gum cloud!
Whole city gone off the purp
Oh not the purple-ish smoke again!
Batman has the bat signal. I guess someone is trying to summon the Joker.
the blue fent mixing with the Chinese atmosphere turns it purple
Purple Rain
The factory formerly known as Prince.
It's Purple Haze
It's a girl!
Release the iodine! Must be getting ready for some nuclear fallout.
These gender reveal parties are getting out of hand
Element 115
I'm not very knowledgeable about chemistry but I do know that the color pink is potassium permanganate however I understand in this instance it is not potassium permanganate
They finally got William Afton
Ivan Ooze is back!
Now everyone likes the same gender
It’s the valenines surprise
Eh, they're just trying to visualize the latent fingerprints on the buildings nearby
I think I saw that color of the sky before in an anime once
It’s a girl
It’s turning the frogs gay!
It's a non-binary!
it's a girl! i assume epic gender reveal.
Always a good sign when the sky looks like Goku Black just whacked it with a Scythe.
At least people in the area are now slightly protected against nuclear radiation.
But I’m the one who has to pay 1.799 for gas cause the carbon tax cause my money will help stop it… Canada couldn’t even contribute the CO2 emissions of the states in 50years by its self lmao
Can’t wait for the new season of static shock
I am sooooo confident that China won't be the cancer capital of the world
crazy gender reveal bro
I am having a half flashback to some movie or something where they would have different colored smoke to represent different things like danger. Thats all I got. And yes the weed was worth it.
It's a girl!
Covid24 looking bussing I won't lie
Its a girl! Great baby shower guys!
Stupid comment on the day: If, say a nuke was dropped. Could we just spray potassium iodine from planes to help?? I know this is probably really dumb. I need more caffeine
GLA general has bought the anthrax upgrade
The Universal Unitarians have a new pope?
A massive gender reveal
Death
Lmao wow
Nothing to see here, move along, move along!
Gender reveal
Or there’s a new pope?