Once in a while HF Acid PSA
 

Hey you all.... It's time for my once in a while HF Acid reminder. We had our gorey-picture training today, so you all get the lite version with no pics. I'm a chemist and chemical engineer working in the surface treatment industry, and I like to share this with all my car buddies once in a while. It's important and I actually do care.

Hydrofluoric acid - known as HF Acid to distinguish from hydrochloric acid - is ****ing dangerous. It is found in a small variety of cleaning products including acid-based wheel cleaners such as Eagle One MAG wheel cleaner and CarBrite's Wheel Acid. Ok, so that one technically contains Ammonium Bifluoride, but guess what? That rearranges in water to make HF Acid.

Please, if you are using a cleaner that contains HF Acid or Ammonium Bifluoride, read and take the following precautions:

0. HF Acid damages and kills by binding with the calcium ions present in your body. This leads to tissue damage (recoverable) and disregulation of heartbeat (often not recoverable).

1. Hazard = concentration x time x area. This means that even at low concentrations, it is a huge-ass hazard. You may not know you have been in contact, but it is trying to kill you anyway.

2. A 1% skin exposure is the size of one side of your hand. This can lead to cardiac arrest if not treated.

3. WEAR SAFETY GLASSES. HF Acid burns to the eye are almost always unrecoverable.

4. WEAR TWO PAIR OF NITRILE GLOVES that you have tested for leaks. Blow them up and hold them under water to check for bubbles.

5. Pain is bad - HF Acid burns are painful, and pain is indicative of damage.

6. Decontaminate with a five minute water wash, then proceed to the local emergency room. Tell them you were working with HF Acid. This language is very important.

7. If you work with this material (DETAILERS... I'm looking at you), consider visiting your pharmacy and getting some tubes of Calcium Gluconate gel to keep on hand. This material is will neutralize the HF Acid and reduce the damage by reacting with and tying up the fluoride ions. If the exposure is small, you can do the decon rinse with water, then apply the calcium gluconate gel yourself. The gel should remain on your skin for about 30 minutes or until pain subsides. You may have to reapply it.

8. If you find and treat the exposed area in a timely manner and with the correct method, 100% recovery is the usual outcome.

While HF Acid is quite dangerous, proper PPE will eliminate nearly all exposure risk, and proper treatment will limit damage significantly.

If you have further questions, please check out www.HFacid.com.

This concludes this PSA on HF acid. Don't get hurt. I love you all. :heart:

LOL At first glance I thought Atom's account had been hacked by a spammer.
Good info that people should pay attention to!

Absolutely good information. People take for granted detailing chemicals are relatively safe without knowing what's in them.

I stopped using wheel cleaner almost 15 years ago, it always burned the hell out of my nose and lungs.

And now I know why. Great.

Hey AA, have you ever used Brown Royal? Thoughts on safety?
Love this stuff

Geez, I'll stick with normal soap and some elbow grease.

That appears to be an alkaline material, which has its own set of hazards. However, they do not compare to HF Acid hazards, so there is that. Again, safety glasses and gloves! The comments about the smell are a bit concerning to me, but they are probably related to the surfactant package, which sounds like good old Triton H66, a phosphate ester surfactant that would be an outstanding choice for cleaning wheels. But, ew.....

I admit here that I have completely given up on dealing with brake dust and now just run dark wheels. One of these days, I will have the Classix on the B5 painted body color and call that a day, too.

The best defense against brake dust is to not use powdercoat as a paint finish on wheels. Use a good epoxy paint applied at minimum film thickiness and it will be much more thermally stable and resistant to picking up specs and burning.

In my former life I worked as a research chemist in polyurethanes. We frequently used 50% hydrofluoric acid to clean glassware. I always wore safety glasses, a face shield, a butyl rubber apron, and forearm length butyl rubber gloves when using it.
A few years before I retired it was banned from our labs. Fortunately in all the years we used it we never had an accident. It will eat through almost everything except polyethylene.
Here's an excellent guide on the Safe Use of Hydrofluoric Acid: https://chemistry.harvard.edu/files/...se_of_hf_0.pdf

It's highly unlikely that forum members will come in contact with concentrated hydrofluoric acid but there are household products that contain it.
This is an excellent database that's put out by the US Dept of Health and Human Services. Here's a list of products that contain hydrofluoric acid:
https://householdproducts.nlm.nih.go...bl=chem&id=161

I personally would not use any of these products, especially Eagle One Chrome Cleaner. https://householdproducts.nlm.nih.go...ds&id=22001046

I used to wash cars at a dealership as a kid back in the early 80s. The Safety Kleen guy (ironically named...) showed up one day with a 5 gallon can of 50% hydrofluoric acid solution (no idea what else was in it) and told us it was great for cleaning brake dust off aluminum wheels, which it WAS. He just said to dilute it with water about 50/50, and use a spray bottle. No protective gear whatsoever. The stuff would blow around, we'd be breathing the fumes and blowback mist, etc. Fucking miracle we lived...lol I have a friend who is a PhD in organic chemistry and when I told him about that, he couldn't believe it either.. But the wheels were spotless!

I think the Safety Kleen guy didn't know exactly what was in the 5 gal can. If the can was metal, 50% hydrofluoric acid would have started to dissolve the can and pressurize it due to hydrogen gas formation. You can only safely store high concentrate hydrofluoric acid in HDPE containers. What he was selling may have had some hydrofluoric acid in it like Eagle One Chrome Cleaner. I'm not sure what the laws were back in the 80's but today you can not sell 50% hydrofluoric acid over the counter.
I don't know the contents of Safety Kleen's cleaners back in the 80's but their current heavy duty cleaner/degreaser concentrate does not contain any hydrofluoric acid. https://www.safety-kleen.com/File%20...991rev2-15.pdf

Here's a bit of trivia. Is it actually possible to dispose of a body with hydrofluoric acid? https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/...rofluoric-acid

When I had a hard time dissolving solids for Atomic Absorption spectroscopy analysis I would use Aqua Regia, 3 parts concentrated hydrochloric acid to 1 part concentrated nitric acid.

And now after you die, of course, instead of having your body cremated you can have it liquified by alkaline hydrolysis. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/b...cremation.html

I have no doubt the Safety Kleen guy had zero idea what was in their products...he wasn't the brightest guy, and we realized this even as dopey teenagers. I don't recall what the container was made from, but I very distinctly recall the label (and is was NOT a Safety Kleen label; just a generic MSDS-style one with all the usual warnings about being an acid, etc) as I'd not heard of hydrofluoric acid before then. I just assumed it was safe to use because the guy said "Here, try this". Honestly, I only used it a few times because it was WAY too aggressive, and I only used it on the worst looking wheels that we're just black and corroded from years of brake dust accumulation and salt corrosion. It ate everything off the wheels in just a matter of minutes, and left them a stark, bleached-out white aluminum color. It did the same to the concrete floor, too, as I recall. There was no oversight or safety concerns back then; the guy showed up, the GM wrote him a check, and then he dropped stuff off in the wash bay.

BTW, I'm not trying to suggest that HF acid is less dangerous than it is, just because we managed to dodge that bullet out of sheer ignorance. It is indeed some nasty stuff and should be treated that way. Just funny how looking back, we realize there were a zillion ways we could've died and didn't even know or care...lol

Glad I use a product that is specifically an acid-free wheel cleaner.

I use AMMO Plum which is acid free and works pretty good

Yep so true. A while back, a guy working as a chemist in my home town (Perth, Western Australia) got a small splash of HF acid on his leg. He jumped in a swimming pool to try and wash it off while the ambulance was on its way. Ambulance arrived in only a couple of minutes and then a few minutes later he was in hospital. He had a emergency amputation of his leg but died shortly afterwards. I think from beginning to end was an hour or two, and it was only a small splash. Nasty stuff.

I ran across that story while Googling. http://www.ab.ust.hk/hseo/tips/ch/ch005.htm

Ok, last post on this subject. He reminds me of Doc from Back to the Future.
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Should have also tested sodium hydroxide.

Great post!

Glad I already use a non-acid based cleaner (Sonax 230200-740).

Now you've got me thinking about the dozens of other products I have on my shelf for detailing. I always wear 6mil nitrile gloves when working on, detailing, and even when washing my car, but I have to wonder how many of these products I use are harmful for skin contact or inhalation. Time to read some labels...