I have heard that mixtures of chlorine and ammonia (chloramines) can be explosive, but have not been able to track down anyoneone who has blown up their toilets with it (definitely toxic though)
much more interesting are mixtures of iodine and ammonia which form black ammonia triiodide which is a touch explosive when dry. Used to give the cleaners in the chemistry department a real shock in the middle of the night. Hee, hee they never caught me.
I should add before anyone shops me to the FBI that I only used very small amounts - enough to make a little bang and puff of smoke but not dangerous
To clean your toilet or remove mold from anything, use borax. It does a better job without the danger of toxic fumes (just don’t eat it). Buy it in the laundry section.
Okay, what the hell just happened? It’s Spring cleaning time and my wife dumped a bunch of bleach into one of our toilets, cleaned the rest of the bathroom, and left the bleach soaking there to remove rust stains. No problem. We’ve done it a ton of times before. I go in, unaware that there’s anything but water in there, and pee. About fifteen seconds into it: “ahhhhhhhhhhhhh—FOOM!”
The water foamed up and some caustic smell smacked me in the face. Holy shit, I think, because I know better than to mix ammonia and bleach. I shut the door, turned on the fan and looked up urine+bleach on the Google and found this ancient thread.
What gives? She insists there was nothing else in the bowl but bleach. She insists she doesn’t have an unknown life insurance policy. This thread says the gas was maybe an anomaly, and no mention of the thick foam. Has pee science developed over the past sixteen years?
(Oh, and remember that it takes headshots, not poison gas to take down a zombie)
Yes, absolutely. The amines in urine will do this. I’ve done it several times
And yet they sell bleach tablets for your toilet. Is Clorox trying to kill us? :eek:
I used to belong to a great YMCA, but I could never use the indoor pool because the “chlorine” fumes were so strong that I would get a headache and a rash. Turns out that this results not from too much chlorine, but too much pee and sweat in the pool, creating chloramines:
EWWW! :eek:
When I was a health aide I had a client who use a commode and an idiotic
health aide poured bleach into her commode and left it in there . When the lady used her commode she got burnt from the fumes . The poor lady was in her
80’s or older and was in pain. I couldn’t believe anyone could be that stupid and pour bleach into a commode and leave it in there . You clean the commode out with beach then rise it out very good ! Then pour water into the commode to help keep the smell down . I knew a woman that was cleaning her bathroom and poured bleach and ammonia into a pail and she almost passed out , she walked into the doorway and got a black eye . She found out the hard way you can’t use bleach and ammonia together and it said this right on the bottles .
No… Cl is no more dangerous than the bleach was itself. that just bleaches the already dead skin and membrane mostly, and anything getting through just joins your stomach acid Cl- … your blood and plasma has plenty of buffer to neutralise any HCl …
The molecule of hydrazine survives until its metabolized in your body, inside a cell… It poisons your nerve cells, as they need a special fat to operate, and the hydrazine changes the property of the fat… and it poisons your liver when the liver breaks it down.
Chronic expose to hydrizine and similar toxins ,even in low levels is bad, and resulting in nerve failure or cancer.
Thank you! Finally, a straight, to-the-point answer!
Thank you! Finally, a straight, to-the-point answer!
I really don’t think anyone is making hydrazine in their toilets. Chloramines, yes. But hydrazine will decompose faster than you can make it without a huge excess of ammonia.
These are not bleach as in sodium hypochlorite. Although you can still get chloramines as the DCDMH decomposes.
The reaction between urea and hypochlorite is complicated. There are several things going on in the reaction, and it depends on reactant ratios and concentration, as well as pH.
Generally most of the gas produced will be nitrogen and carbon dioxide, but some chloramine comes out as well. Hydrazine is transiently produced in the reaction, but generally it will get oxidized by hypochlorite at a much more rapid rate than the urea does.
Chloramine is kind of unstable too, in solution in water (especially at higher concentrations) it gradually decomposes.
The first step in the reaction is the oxidation of urea to a partial radical. H2NCON:
(If I remember correctly) this radical then hydrolyzes with a another molecule of water and reforms into carbon dioxide.
Sooo. I did heavy piss on a clorax filled toilet more than once. And I swear my eyes soaked. Hydrazine? Some other HCl2O7U2 chemical? Or just my imagination? 
Does this have anything to do with jellyfish stings? They’re dangerous too, but not banned-by-Geneva dangerous.
To my understanding, chlorine plus urea creates chloramine. When you go to a pool and it smells like pool, what you’re smelling is chloramine, the piss of a thousand small children.
Absolutely don’t mix ammonia and chlorine because you will physically die. But urine doesn’t convert to ammonia without a lot of bacterial activity.