I need information on the health hazards of chlorine as a gas, as a solute in water, and how it acts to make other chemicals toxic and/or more toxic.  Does anybody know af any books or periodicals online I could get a hold of?  If there is no solid information online, are there any good books about it out there?  I need this info for a paper on The Health Hazards of Chlorine.                                   Corby Shaner

I need information on the health hazards of chlorine as a gas, as a solute in water, and how it acts to make other chemicals toxic and/or more toxic.  Does anybody know af any books or periodicals online I could get a hold of?  If there is no solid information online, are there any good books about it out there?  I need this info for a paper on The Health Hazards of Chlorine.   Perhaps you had better find a source of Official propagandistic swill.   Your thesis reeks of Environmentalist dogma and New Age hind gut fermentation.  Let me put it more simply:  You don't know what you are talking about. Hazards of chlorine are available from any gas supplier such as Matheson or Liquid Carbonic, both in their de_script_ive literature and as Material Safety Data Sheets.  Elemental chlorine is not especially hazardous short of breathing the stuff, which also holds true for water or table salt. How it acts to make other chemicals toxic... has no basis in fact.   Official hypertoxic chemicals such as the nerve gases contain fluorine. The hyperhallucinogen quinuclidine benzilate has no halogen at all.   Hypertoxic phenyl silatrane has no halogen, nor does hydrogen cyanide, batrachotoxin, Sudden Death Factor, Dogger Bank Itch Allergen, orellanine, tetramethylenedisulfotetramine, acetyl glyceryl ether phosphorylcholine, SF6847, MPTP... or each and any of a galaxy of hypertoxic materials.  (How lucky we are that terrorists are too stupid to pass organic chem.) PVC garden pipe is mostly chlorine by weight - certainly its _base_ resin.  The only harm which comes of it is filling it with lead shot and hitting somebody over the head.  Then again, we all know how hazardous lead is. Get real.

I need information on the health hazards of chlorine as a gas, as a solute in water, and how it acts to make other chemicals toxic and/or more toxic.  Does anybody know af any books or periodicals online I could get a hold of?  If there is no solid information online, are there any good books about it out there?  I need this info for a paper on The Health Hazards of Chlorine.   Call Greenpeace.  They know all about chlorine.  It was invented by the devil to rot our minds and livers.  See associated post by UncleAl.  There's nothing I can add to it.  (Except that part of my salary comes from making instruments that detect chlorinated hydrocarbons.) If you work hard, you can remove all the chlorine (as chloride) from your body.  (But you will die instantly.) ************************************************************ Bill Penrose, Sr. Scientist, Transducer Research, Inc.    600 North Commons Drive, Suite 117    Aurora, IL 60504    708-978-8802, fax -8854, email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ************************************************************ Purveyors of fine gas sensors and contract R&D to this and nearby galaxies. ************************************************************

       i know all that...now what i want to know is why are you so snotty in your reply?  you misunderstood me with your high and mighty knowledge of chemistry.  and if everybody on this newsgroup is this way then what's the use in having it?  i'm interested in chemistry, not environmentalism.  i wanna know how chlorine acts to make PVC the way it is and yet makes COCL2 have the properties it has.  and then, i wanna know why chlorine can be an ingredient in some drugs and yet be able to kill you when it's associated with chlorobenzene.  why don't you step down from your throne you PhD and tell me straight out????????   Now that's a question that can be dealt with, being a little more value-free than your first post.  First of all, a full answer will involve a few years of chemistry.  The short answer is that the chemical properties of all substances are a result of the electron-mediated interactions among the various atomic nuclei that make up a compound.  PVC is a very long chain of carbon atoms (held together by the sharing of electrons between adjacent atoms) with a chlorine on every second carbon.  If the chlorine wasn't there, it would be polyethylene.  PVC changes its properties in ways that make it useful for different purposes (mechanical strength, chemical inertness, etc.).  If it was another carbon instead of chlorine, you have polypropylene.  Chlorine is just a way of modifying its properties. If you take a simple alkane, like methane (one carbon, four hydrogens) and stick three chlorine atoms on it, you have chloroform.  Methane is a colorless, odorless gas that you can breathe without much hard, but it is very flammable.  Make chloroform out of it, and you have a clear liquid that will dissolve many other chemicals and will also attack the membranes of your liver, causing great harm over long periods.  But is is not flammable.  The properties are the result of the interactions of electrons, not anything inherently wrong or evil about chlorine itself. And don't mind UncleAl.  He is very pompous and can be, as you say, snotty.   But he is also very wise, and you can learn from him. Bill Chemistry is about electrons Penrose ************************************************************ Bill Penrose, Sr. Scientist, Transducer Research, Inc.    600 North Commons Drive, Suite 117    Aurora, IL 60504    708-978-8802, fax -8854, email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ************************************************************ Purveyors of fine gas sensors and contract R&D to this and nearby galaxies. ************************************************************

okay, that's what i thought...there are electron interactions between chlorine and other elements within a chemical that would cause the chemical to have different properties.         i'm a sophomore in college and i'm in my second semester of organic chem.  i understand most of the other things posted on this newsgroup because of the understanding of chemistry my professors have taught me.           i respect the knowledge UncleAl has.  i know i can learn a lot from him...i guess i didn't phrase my question the right way for him and some others to understand.                                   Corby