Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: hoey@sun33.aic.nrl.navy.mil (Dan Hoey)
Date: 1997/01/10
Subject: Re: Possible UL - cleaning lady/nerve gas?

About:

> ... a cleaning lady who, by unwittingly mixing two cleaning products
> (maybe bleach and ammonia?)  managed to generate NERVE GAS, as used
> in WWII.

rick larson <ralar...@uiuc.edu> writes:

> ... The product is actually chloramine, which is close enough in
> volatility and reactivity to chlorine to cause acute and serious
> health problems.

I've mostly heard this about hydrazine, a volatile neurotoxin that can
be absorbed through the skin.  It has been suggested that there are
enough impurities in the household mix to decompose almost all of the
hydrazine, but I wouldn't want to bet on it.  I don't know how the
neurotoxicity of chloramine compares with hydrazine, but I suspect
either of them is harmful in much lower doses than the chlorine.
Here's part of an old post from Karl Hahn:

(  Newsgroups: sci.chem
 ) From: h...@lds.loral.com  (Karl Hahn)
(  Subject: Re: Reacting bleach and ammonia
 ) Message-ID: <950117123...@are107.lds.loral.com>
(  Organization: Loral Data Systems
 ) Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 17:37:57 GMT
   ...
(  2) When you mix bleach solution with ammonia solution you get an
immediate
 ) reaction.  Actually you are getting a number of competing
reactions.  Under
(  carefully controlled conditions, you can get:
 )
(    2NH3 + 2ClO-  -->  2NH2Cl + 2OH-  -->  N2H4 + Cl2 + 2OH-
 )  ammonia bleach    chloramine          hydrazine
(
 ) This is one of the commercial methods of producing hydrazine (there's
(  another hydrazine process in use as well that involves oxydizing NH3
 ) in the presence of acetone, but I've forgotten how that works).  In
(  order for the above reaction to produce hydrazine in appreciable
 ) yields, the ammonia has to be in excess and the solutions have to be
(  free of metal ions such as Cu or Fe, which catalyze competing
 ) reactions.  You also need to demobilize the solutions by adding
(  gelatin or glue to them.  Both chloramine and hydrazine are volatile
 ) and toxic to humans, as is, of course, chlorine gas.
(
 ) 3) The reaction that competes most vigorously with the above is:
(
 )    2NH2Cl + 2OH- + ClO-  -->  N2 + 3Cl- + 3H2O
(
 ) due to the great stability of N2.  If you simply mix the two household
(  solutions, the mixture foams, and the bubbles are mostly nitrogen.   But
 ) enough chlorine and chloramine are blown from the solution by the
(  nitrogen that it is hazardous to breathe the effluent.

Dan Hoey
Hoey@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil