DIARY OF A BIOCHEM MAJOR

Oh hi there halogons. Looks like you and carbon are getting along pretty well! Typically you and carbon aren’t very good friends and you tend to be pretty reactive and not very healthy. Oh you can cause cancer? Well dang, look at the time! Got to go do something that involves me leaving the room!

Chloroform is one of the chemicals that you would rather not work with, but sometimes you just have to. Its very useful as a solvent, especially for NMRs (the CDCl3 variety), as it can dissolve a whole range of organic chemicals. The only nasty thing is that it will basically go straight through your gloves and into your hand. During a lab a year ago we were using it dissolve a reagent and I got a few drops on my glove. I didn’t think much of it until I saw it go straight through my glove and into my hand. Those few drops of chloroform made my hand numb for about 5 minutes. Now that was fun, especially when trying to hold on to test tubes.

In the ye olde days, chloroform was used as an anesthetic. Chloroform must really like its job because it could put you right to sleep…and then kill you. Luckily scientists quickly found out about its toxicity and abandoned it. Also, if you store chloroform for too long and expose it to oxygen, it can form phosgene, an extremely toxic gas that was used during WWI. Fun.