Any chemists on the SDMB?
In Chem lab yesterday we did some cleaning of glassware that involved the use of diluted nitric acid. A bunch of it got on my hands and turned them yellow. Is there any cleaning product that will remove the stain, or do I just have to wait until my skin cells slough off?
I did the same think in HS Chemistry. You just gotta wait for it to slough off.
A “bunch” of it, you say? You might want to see a doctor, just to be safe.
The staining of your skin from Nitric Acid is due to NO2 attachment to the various proteins in your skin. Since the proteins are imbedded in the lipid bilayers making up the cell walls, it’s pretty much permanent (to those cells anyway). Similar staining takes place with Iodine and Silver Nitrate (purple and black); although in the case of Iodine you don’t have to wait for your skin to repenish, but this is due to Iodine bonding ionically and not covalently.
Depends on your definition of “bunch”. “bunch” isn’t one of our standard units you know…
If it was just a few millileters that dribbled or splashed or sprayed, the stains might last a week or so.
If you had your hands submerged in a tub of the stuff, you might wait a month.
You said it was dilute, and for washing glassware a 10 fold dilution would be a reasonable assumption. So you probably didn’t get hit with that much.
Just wait a while.
we used to “tatoo” rude words on people with this stuff and with Silver nitrate (deeper colour).
It’ll just look like you’re a very heavy smoker for a bunch of time.