Monday, January 30, 2012

What is the level of worker safety at Chinese chemical manufacturers?







  1. I'd also be worried about the safety of patients on clinical trials of leads scaled by Wuxi. A colleague of mine received a sample which was the wrong salt form which caused all sorts of unexpected results in animal studies.

  2. I heard the Aldrich labs in the US aren't great. Hoods below par, buildings failing apart.


    So it's not a toxin, its a pro-toxin.

    For that matter, it's not ethanol that makes you feel like crap the next day, it's the metabolite acetaldehyde.

    1. Yes, but ethanol has plenty of bioactive effects, too, while I suspect that hexane doesn't bind to much.

      Maybe I'm approaching this incorrectly, but I just find the incorrect usage to be somewhat annoying. Perhaps toxicologists think differently.

    2. I'm not a toxicologist, and I don't think you're wrong, but I do think that metabolites are as important as the compound itself. That's why you have to get tox data on drug metabolites for the FDA.

      FWIW, it works both ways. If I'm not mistaken, toluene is itself a DNA intercolator just like benzene. However, unlike benzene toluene has a metabolic handle, so your body can clear it as benzoic acid. Benzene is not easily cleared, hence the increased toxicity.

  4. Yeah, I think the assertion that we "solved the dust problem a century ago" is total BS.

  5. I think it's "hexanes" -- mixture of isomers, plus methylcyclopentane -- probably not pure n-hexane. As for the toxic effects--it's not really a potent neurotoxin (LD50 25g/kg).

  6. Oh c'mon, who cares? I know I don't.

  7. hexane is one of several solvents that can have nasty cumulative health effects over the long run if you soak your hands in it every day. A potent neurotoxin it is not (in my book a potent neurotoxin is for example a marine channel blocker plankton toxin made accumulated by fish and mollusks - your lips and tongue start going numb as you are eating a bad fish and then suddenly your muscle quit working, you get carried out of the restaurant on a stretcher)

  8. At my (US) company we are not allowed to use hexane(s) for column chromatography any more, just heptane. On the other hand, they still let/make the farmworkers fumigate the strawberry crops with freakin' methyl iodide. Can't say our hands are particularly clean...

  9. Welfare of employees is the need of the hour these days. Many companies make their worker work without giving them proper resources. As a result, accidents, injuries, sickness, and deaths happen due to pressure to keep up the performance. If business owners and employers give priority to their workers profit then one day a workplace will be heaven-like.

    Best Regards,
    Jimmie Menon