Re: Methylene Chloride

[Paul Witek <pwitek@domain.elided>]

I have to chime in here with a few words about methylene chloride - it's great stuff, strips just about anything, melts plastic, and doesn't produce flammable vapor/air mixtures at room temperature.  (plus, it's fun to drop styrene packing "peanuts" into a container of it - they just vanish!)

BUT - it's nasty stuff, health-wise.  Please, take proper precautions when using it.  Standard rubber gloves won't work, nor will vinyl gloves (like those non-latex "surgical" gloves).  I spent several years working in a chem lab doing organic extractions using gallons of meth. cloride a day.  You haven't lived until you get the strange sensation of having a pair of gloves melt onto your hands....

In the end I was using a pair of viton gloves (yes, the same material in Alfa head gasket o-rings).  Not cheap, but I wasn't too keen on getting repeated chemical burns (and bumping up the risk of cancer).

By all means, use it - it works great - but please be careful.

- Paul Witek

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