Whats that?
And of late, I've been delving somewhat into the chemistry of the nitrile functional group (an organocyanide) for some, err, well things, that I've been a'pondering. And it might be doable with out the use or preparation, purification of via the truly noxious, deadly HCN gas, via an unusual phosphorus-iodine based reagent, diphosphorus tetraiodide, and while I need to buy more I2, I do have some, I just need to replenish my stocks of iodine so I'm not actually left without.
And phosphorus I have by the kilogram, should I ever want several kg of phosphorus at once (red phosphorus, although I can prepare white phosphorus from it, either directly fired under inert gas in a DIY single-use metal still, to avoid subjecting my beloved and highly prized glassware to abusive levels of heat needed to boil and distill white phosphorus, or else form a metal phosphide, and CAAAAAREFULLY, prepare phosphine gas ( a very, very deadly poison), as an intermediate and pass it diluted in inert gas through an externally heated pipe, to decompose phosphine to its component elements, leaving white phosphorus behind, but thats not a method I'd want to use unless I had need of a small quantity of very, very highly purified white phosphorus, such as if I were to undertake some manner of phosphorus radioisotope labelled phosphorus reagent and then use it to prepare a radioactively tagged compound or bit of genetic code based on a radioactive nucleic acid phosphodiester backbones, but otherwise I'd sooner avoid a phosphorus-based answer to the Marsh test given the obscenely toxic nature of phosphine gas (its PH3, the phosphorus version of ammonia, often comes along with diphosphine, P2H4, like diborane, its pyrophoric, and it, like PH3 is virulently poisonous stuff, so much so that catching on fire spontaneously on contact with air is a blessing, a lot of the simple binary nonmetal or semimetal hydrides of the kind XH3 or X2H4 where X=element from the pnictogen or chalcogen series, as well as boranes and other carbon related element hydrides are both pyrophoric and heinously toxic, including the chalcogen hydrides like H2S, H2Se and H2Te, the notorious rotten egg stench compound hydrogen sulfide, which is also, which is less widely known, about as deadly as cyanide and much more insidious*, hydrogen selenide and telluride are worse still, H2Se being considerably more toxic than H2S, I've never encountered H2Te and I really, really don't want to because tellurium compounds, if absorbed in even tiny concentrations tend to end up as the likes of dialkyl and alkyl tellurides, tellurols (the tellurium answer to an alcohol, phenol, thiol or thiophenol, or corresponding selenols, only with Te in place of O, S, or Se), and come out over a long, long time period from the victim, as some truly atrocious stinking stuff.
And I've HAD the sulfur version happen to me once, accidentally, which usually doesn't happen, but something happened to have a metabolic kink or two that hadn't been worked out or known at the time, or at least not to me. The stuff comes out in EVERYTHING, even tear fluid, even up your nose exudes noxious fumes of stinking sulfurous abominations that ruin (permanently, they had to be worn for a week, to avoid contact with other clothes, then burned in the middle of nowhere in black plastic sacks, double bagged when it was over)
Tellurium breath, as we chemists call the Te effect, where even traces of tellurium or compounds of it if absorbed by touch etc., come out like that is apparently SO bad people have killed themselves because of it. And things people afflicted with Te-breath have been in uni libraries etc. and EVERYONE knows just who picked out what book, by the fact that they are nearly unapproachably foul, from the touch of the poor cursed bastard's tellurium-laced, rotten leek-and-arse-and-sulfurous-horror-ish-abomination-laced fingerprints.
And bad enough that one record exists of a german chemist accidentally dropping a vial of dibutyl ditelluride on a train carriage. It broke, and they had to scrap the carriage. For good. It just wasn't, and never again ever would or could possibly be decontaminated to any extent that made it suitable for carrying either people or property. So AFAIK it was melted down for scrap metal for recycling, or else forever left somewhere.
From the very mildest, sulfur version, I really believe it. People turned and RAN 100s of feet down an open street. They turned round and ran the fuck away in the opposite direction as surely as if I had threatened rape and knife-murder, not necessarily in that option, of first their loved ones for them to watch then them.
It was an awful experience. Thankfully nobody hurt, although I saw enough evil looks on enough faces. But nobody ever came close enough to E.g swing a punch. I don't think they could.
I wouldn't have if I hadn't been stuck with inhabiting the source of the temporary reek
as it was, it was coming out of everything from piss to skin to tears and as such, followed me a bloodhound in reverse, tracking you down and making you smell filthy.
*H2S and relatives, if the concentration is less than instantaneously lethal to the victim and the filthy stench doesn't drive them away then they tend to paralyze the olfactory nerve, and prevent the stench from being detectable, leading somebody to remain in the area and not take flight immediately to avoid ending up on fr.ex hydrogen sulfide's sneak-kill score tally. It stinks. Its relatives stink even worse by orders of magnitude. You are in the presence of enough to be lethal over time weighted exposure but not to kill in a single breath. Filthy stench stops being stinky. You think it's gone and all is safe. It hasn't and they aren't and it isn't. The problem isn't the gas, its you, because its paralyzed your sense of smell, lining up it's scope crosshairs for that one-shot silenced sneak-kill to ghost your ass)
