From: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU> On Behalf Of Carmen Nitsche
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2019 4:40 PM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] New Article

to your point about embarrassment - we need to be supportive of all those folks who get up and share these important incidents to help us stay safe.  That is why we should give tremendous credit to both Barry Sharpless and Ian Tonks  -  both of whom shared in great detail their experiences of frightening lab accidents on the recent C&EN SteroChemistry podcast ( https://cen.acs.org/safety/Podcast-Lessons-learned-lab-safety/97/i30 ) 

Thanks, Carmen.  A very worthwhile project that I hope is getting traction despite the embarrassment many feel at doing a reaction poorly and then owning up to it, even if you found something interesting or useful in analyzing why.

 

Thanks again!

 

Lee

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Carmen Nitsche
Sent: Aug 12, 2019 12:45 PM
To: lhlatimer**At_Symbol_Here**mindspring.com, ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety
Cc: Pistoia , Mark Manfredi , CSL Admins
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] New Article

Lee-- thank you so much for alerting us to this article.  I am pleased to note that my colleagues have just today put three entries into the Pistoia Alliance Chemical Safety Library database coming from this paper. 

 

 The CSL database collects reactions gone wrong in a reusable format (database includes GHS codes, InChI, CAS#, Description of incident, etc).  The CSL is available as a CSV file to anyone who requests it (send email requests for the CSL .csv file to csladmin**At_Symbol_Here**pistoiaalliance.org)    We also post all the entries to PubChem on a regular basis (appear in section  Section 12.8.3.1 of the compound summaries)

 

I should also note that we continue to solicit new entries to the database, for any reactions gone wrong, or near miss reaction events from which we can all learn.    If you have an incident you would like included, please fill out this simple GoogleForm and we will be in touch if we have any questions.    (your name and institution  will not appear in the public database). 

 

Thanks again,  --Carmen

 

Carmen Nitsche Business Development Consultant https://www.pistoiaalliance.org https://ip3.pistoiaalliance.org/ Mobile: 1 (510) 589 3355 Linkedin, Twitter

 

 

On Sat, Aug 10, 2019 at 4:27 PM <lhlatimer**At_Symbol_Here**mindspring.com> wrote:

All,

 

For those working with synthetic chemists in research and in process/scale-up, an article out today in ASAP Alerts for Organic Process Research and Development (an ACS journal) should be of critical interest to them, regardless of their sense of glory or career situation.  I've copied the reference and abstract below.  The subject is explosion potential of sodium hydride use in polar parotid solvents (i.e. DMSO, DMF and DMA).  

 

This, by the way, is a journal that has safety quite frequently as a topic.

 

Best,

 

Lee

 

Explosion Hazards of Sodium Hydride in Dimethyl Sulfoxide, N,N-Dimethylformamide, and N,N-Dimethylacetamide

Qiang Yang, David E. Ejeh, et al.

DOI:10.1021/acs.oprd.9b00276   Abstract   The hazards associated with the thermal decomposition of chemically incompatible sodium hydride solvent matrices are known, with reports from the 1960s detailing the inherent instability of NaH/dimethyl sulfoxide, NaH/N,N-dimethylformamide, and NaH/N,N-dimethylacetamide mixtures. However, these hazards remain underappreciated and undercommunicated, likely as a consequence of the widespread use of these NaH/solvent matrices in synthetic chemistry. We report herein detailed investigations into the thermal stability of these mixtures and studies of the formation of gaseous products from their thermal decomposition. We expect this contribution to promote awareness of these hazards within the wider scientific community, encourage scientists to identify and pursue safer alternatives, and most importantly, help to prevent incidents associated with these reactive mixtures.

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