I’ve been a fan of Derek Lowe’s pharma-blog for years. So much so that I offered him a spot as a regular contributor in my magazine. His writings on the economics of pharma companies and the vagaries of R&D are gems.
That said, I sometimes glaze over when he writes about esoteric aspects of medicinal chemistry. It’s not that I find them boring; I just don’t have any background that would help me with what he’s talking about. But then there are times he manages to cross over beautifully from the lab to the general audience.
Today, for example, in his series on lab accidents, he explains that there’s actually a substance that will cause sand to catch fire.
There’s a report from the early 1950s . . . of a one-ton spill of [chlorine trifluoride]. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I’m sure no one involved ever forgot. That process, I should add, would necessarily have been accompanied by copious amounts of horribly toxic and corrosive by-products: it’s bad enough when your reagent ignites wet sand, but the clouds of hot hydrofluoric acid are your special door prize if you’re foolhardy enough to hang around and watch the fireworks.