66 DIY Science: Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments
SIPPIH nG HAzARDOUS CHEMICALS
Some of the chemicals used in this book are classified as
hazardous for shipping purposes. The rules and regulations for
shipping hazardous chemicals are incredibly complex and change
frequently. It’s almost a full-time job to keep up with them. The
specific chemical, its form (granular, powder, chunks, and so on),
and the quantity in question all have a bearing on whether that
chemical can be shipped by a particular method. The upshot is
that it can be extremely expensive to ship even small quantities of
some chemicals.
Commercial, industrial, and university laboratories deal with this
problem by ordering large quantities at one time, consolidating
orders, and resigning themselves to paying high transportation
charges. Those aren’t realistic options for most home labs. There
are four ways to avoid these high shipping charges:
- Don’t use the chemical. In some cases, you can
substitute another chemical that is available without
hazard surcharges. Other times, you can make the
chemical yourself from precursors that are not subject to
shipping surcharges. (Note that some of these chemicals
are listed as hazardous for a very good reason; you may
want to avoid them entirely for safety’s sake. On the other
hand, some of them, such as acetone and alcohols, are no
more hazardous than many chemicals in your medicine
cabinet or garden shed.) - Buy the chemical locally. If you live in a large city, there
are probably numerous commercial chemical supply
houses within easy driving distance. Even if you live in
a small town, you can find many hazardous chemicals
at a hardware store (e.g., hydrochloric acid, sodium
hydroxide, acetone and other ketones), drugstore (e.g.,
ethanol, isopropanol), pool supply store (e.g., potassium
permanganate), agricultural supply store (e.g., potassium
nitrate, ammonium nitrate, calcium nitrate), auto parts
store (sulfuric acid), and so on. - Chemicals that require hazardous shipping surcharges
in their solid or concentrated forms are often available as
dilute solutions without surcharges. Although the price is
very high per gram of chemical, if you need only a small
amount of the chemical, this can be the least expensive
way to get it. For example, rather than ordering solid
barium nitrate and paying hazard surcharges, you might
find you can order 50 mL of 0.1 M barium nitrate solution
for $2.50 without hazard surcharges. That solution
contains only 1.3 g of barium nitrate, but that may be all
you need. This, incidentally, is also a cost-effective way
of ordering any chemical that you need in very small
CBNGUyI HEmICALS THE EASy wAy
In addition to individual chemicals, Maker Shed (http://
http://www.makershed.com) offers various chemical kits that
include, with the exception of nitric acid, most or all of the
specialty chemicals needed to complete the lab sessions
in this book.quantities, whether or not the solid or concentrated
chemical is subject to surcharges.- Buy the chemical from a vendor that does not charge
hazardous shipping surcharges on small amounts of
chemicals. With the exception of concentrated nitric acid
and a few other chemicals, small amounts (typically 25
g or mL to 100 g or mL) of most hazardous chemicals
can be shipped without surcharges under Small Quantity
Exemption or ORM-D regulations.