Hydrochloric acid tastes sour. Very sour. It doesn’t really burn as much as I thought it would in my mouth, even at 5M concentration, though I only had it in my mouth for a few seconds.
Ah, you want to know why I accidentally ingested HCl? Sit down, kids; this is a long story. Back in the day, when I was at school and the dinosaurs roamed the earth, we were doing titration as part of a chemistry practical exam. We were using mouth pipettes (which these days would be banned in schools, but in India in the 1990s… not so much) and my attention wandered for a couple of moments as I was sucking up the HCl solution. Before I knew it… wham, mouth full of liquid and instant sourness. I ran to the sink and spat it out, and much rinsing with water and then sodium bicarbonate solution followed. No permanent ill-effects, but I have often wondered if my tendency to sensitive teeth is due to this exposure. I wouldn’t recommend it much.
Yeah, its actually not that bad in small doses (drank it when siphoning a fuel tank as have many others in this thread).
Its certainly not the worst thing I’ve ever drunk. That honour would go to the time I was siphoning an old hot water tank at my parents house, swallowed an entire mouthful of stagnant water, mud, various insects etc…uggghhh…surprisingly I didn’t throw up, though I probably should have!
Wow. That must have been noxious indeed, that she’s still bringing it up after 18 years. :eek: One would think it would all be entirely out of her system long before that!
You ever notice that certain fast food joints, specializing in deep-fried poultry, are commonly located in the same block as Kragen or other auto parts stores? Hmmmm? Just what did you think they were cooking those chickens in all this time?
You some lucky. I read or heard, somewhere, a similar story. Only it was something stronger than that. (Don’t remember what it was, or if the article even said.) Some lab assistant got a pipette of the Wrong Stuff in her mouth, which promptly burned off the entire lower half of her face, from the inside out.
That’s a lot of :eek: and right there. I think mouth-pipetting HCl is bad enough, but there is plenty more that could have much worse effects - NaOH, for example, at the same concentration. I know I was lucky go get away with essentially no damage and a mildly amusing story to tell. It could so easily have been a Very Bad Thing.
Gasoline has changed over the years. Many years ago, it was slightly unpleasant, but not bad enough to make me hesitate to siphon gas if there was a reason to. But a year or so ago I did so and it was totally different - it was horrible - a tiny drop made me choke and cough and gag and spit for many minutes. The difference was so extreme that I don’t think it could just have been a different brand.
Now I would not siphon gas unless it was a really dire emergency, and I keep one of those squeeze bulb pumps in my truck to avoid it.
There’s some gas additive that’s seriously deadly toxic in concentration. It might be the stuff they add to “odorize” it, or maybe something else.
I had a teacher who liked to tell his “wars stories”. As a National Guard member, he was sometimes part of a detail assigned to escort a truck carrying that concentrated stuff. He said it was so toxic, if you got one drop on your skin, you were dead in five minutes. If such a truck ever ran off the road or there was otherwise a major toxic spill of the stuff, you had to evacuate the entire area out to a radius of, like, here to Saturn.
Even with these warnings and some who have reported the taste as horrible, I am still craving it. I watch this video all the time and even though the gentleman had a bad reaction (unless it was just all fake and the cans were switched), I fantasize doing the same.
I actually do see a shrink on a weekly basis (this has been for years) and told him about my urge to drink gasoline, but he simply said it was because of my anaemia. LOL!
Edit: I decided to take a lick of the apple-scented dish-washing soap-- it wasn’t so bad. But the generic brand of orange antibacterial dish-washing soap-- YUCK! I imagine that I will be disgusted to that extent if I lick some gasoline, but I need to kill this craving once and for all.
right there. I think mouth-pipetting HCl is bad enough, but there is plenty more that could have much worse effects - NaOH, for example, at the same concentration. I know I was lucky go get away with essentially no damage and a mildly amusing story to tell. It could so easily have been a Very Bad Thing.