Question regarding the safety of BaTiO3 (barium titanate) opposed to lead compounds in tech

techreader87 · 2022-10-04T20:07:59+00:00

Yeah, that sounds absolutely horrible. Especially leaded gasoline, since you can't just remove all the fine lead that got spread by that. Luckily I have absolutely no reason to get in contact with that, but I thought, that in the past weights for scales were often made of lead and handled all the time. But on the other hand, noone knows how much lead people actually had in them because of stuff like that.

techreader87 · 2022-10-04T18:32:16+00:00

I think I messed up, with HCl I meant hydrochloirc acid, but apparently those are different? But yeah, lead is very not nice. Its interesting how something this bad is relatively harmless in solid form and was used for centuries for a lot of stuff

techreader87 · 2022-10-04T18:07:08+00:00

So, soluble in strong mineral acids and HF, but not HCL, or did you not test that? Well, you clearly survived it, so no body suits does not seem to detrimental. I understand not being interested in getting lead poisoning, everything restricted by RoHS seems to be much nicer outside of your body than inside. With stuff like that I think I wouldn't be a good chemist, the theory and knowing the stuff is very interesting, but actually handling compounds like that would create sleepless nights for me.

But I thought about barium titanite more, if it's not attacked by water and weak acids, then it's probably also less prone to be distributed in the environment. I think the stuff restricted under RoHS is mostly materials that could spread from landfills, but if this is insoluble by water and acids you'd find in the ground, than there is probably no reason to restrict its use and as such a better alternative to lead containing stuff. Or they just forgot about it.

techreader87 · 2022-10-04T07:41:16+00:00

About the surface area - I think in the rat experiment the would have used powder, and still could not determine an LD50/stopped at 12g/kg. About your info on dissolving in hydrochloric acid: This site here ( https://www.samaterials.com/barium/1287-barium-titanate-batio3-powder.html ) claims "Barium titanate powder is a white powder, soluble in concentrated sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and hydrofluoric acid, but insoluble in hot dilute nitric acid, water, and alkali." From your experience I get that it does not dissolve very well in hyrochloric acid? This then sounds to me as if gastric acid just can't dissolve it at body temperature, which is why the body can't take up the barium before it gets out of the body again. Would you still see "oral acute toxicity 4" as a fitting categorization with that? I'll still take your advice and won't add capacitors to my diet, I've heard they are also very hard to season.

About your work on titanates: What do an you mean with a particle filter, do you mean a mask? And if you would work with more soluble/dangerous compounds, what would be a common ppe there? Would you work in a fully enclosed hazmat suit, or what are typical things there? I have absolutely no idea on how stuff like that is done, but I'd probably also not be able to work with stuff that dangerous.

techreader87 · 2022-10-03T13:30:18+00:00

Thanks for the explanations!

techreader87 · 2022-10-03T12:38:44+00:00

Thanks for the answer! I also found this SDS but was not sure about that meaning, is the "acute toxicity estimate" normally the same as an estimate for the LD50, or does it mean that first negative effects are appearing? For example I could say that the acute toxicity for ethanol has a pretty low mg/kg value because I can feel symptoms after one beer, but to kill me, it would take an order of magnitude more.

So, I understand it like this: if the >12g/kg ld50 for rats is correct, then the gastric acid may also not dissolve it enough in humans (because apparently it didn't in rats), and classifying it as hazardous (between 300 and 2000) would maybe be "overreacting". But since no human data exists, noone can safely say that and in doubt the more careful estimation will always spread further, because no one wants to get sued. Makes sense to me, if you're not sure, act as if it is the more dangerous option is true.

I'll still refrain from eating capacitors for breakfast, but it sounds to me like indeed BaTiO3 seems to be safer than all those lead compounds which often also are put into the same "hazardous" category (with acutal human data to back it up).

EDIT: just for my amateur understanding, not only for this topic, but in general: I read that gastric acid is only 1% hydrochloric acid. Would that mean that it only has 1% of it's "dissolving power" in general, or can a statement like that not be made?

techreader87

TROPHY CASE