Interesting article. I have always viewed Benzene as a bogeyman of sorts. My parents both interacted with it often throughout my life. My dad was a chemical engineer for an oil company, and he often spoke of spills and incidents. As a kid, I never understood what it was, but the tone and urgency were always something scary.
I also strongly suspect my mother's Benzene exposures (nurse cleaning lab slides with Benzene and no PPE) led to me battling Langerhans Histiocytosis throughout my childhood.
> Its peculiar behaviour, such as its surprising stability despite being highly unsaturated, hinted at a deeper mystery that would not be fully resolved until the mid-19th century with the proposal of its cyclic structure.
How were chemists in the early 19th century able to determine benzene must be highly unsaturated without knowing its structure? Did they simply combust it and measure the amount of water vapor and carbon dioxide produced?
jcranmer 5 hours ago [-]
There's a two step-process to stochiometry.
The first step, as people have elaborated below, is combust the compound and measure the weights of various oxides, which (after the atomic masses of the relevant elements were settled around the 1820s) lets you work out the empirical formula of an unknown molecule. For benzene, this would tell you that there is 1 C : 1 H, but this doesn't tell you if it's C₄H₄ or C₆H₆ or C₁₁₁H₁₁₁.
The second step is to determine the molar mass of your compound, which requires finding something that depends on the amount of substance but not the mass directly. (In modern times, this is primarily mass spec). Back in the 19th century, this is probably abusing the ideal gas law, which lets you compute the number of moles in a gas given the pressure, temperature, and volume of a vessel. Combine this with the mass of that container, and you know how much a mole weighs. If you get out, say, 77g/mol, and you know that the ratio is 1 C : 1 H, well, the only formula that makes sense is C₆H₆ (which should ideally have 78g/mol, but you might not get the right answer for various experimental reasons).
isoprophlex 6 hours ago [-]
What these early chemists accomplished with, to our eyes, extremely crude methods is astounding. Physical methods like weighing, burning and collecting residue; describing crystallization and precipitation behavior, even smelling (and sometimes tasting) was at one point a routine thing to do.
radicalbyte 1 hours ago [-]
The story of how Oxygen was discovered was super interesting and involved all of these methods.
bravesoul2 45 minutes ago [-]
Wow. Pre that discovery what did they think explained phonomenon like snuffing out a candle. Or blowing air on a fire.
How cool, it's still in the ACS logo! Germans have the best names lol. Calibration apparatus.
perihelions 3 hours ago [-]
> "Calibration apparatus"
I believe it's kali from German Kaliumhydroxid[0] (KOH, what it uses to dissolve CO2), from the same "potassium" root as al-kali in English, from medieval Arabic[1]. (And also metonymically a name for the coastal salt-marsh plant[2] from which medieval workers sourced potash/potassium[3]. I actually submitted that plant to HN [4] a few days ago, but no one was excited about it. They were once an essential ingredient in glassmaking, hence their other name, "glasswort").
The literal meaning is indeed potassium apparatus / device / contraption. The Kali part is indeed shortened from Kaliumhydroxid.
Strangely enough, the modern German name is Fünf-Kugel-Apparat, "five balls apparatus". I found that one simply by going through "Other languages" on Wikipedia.
And benzene is called Benzol in German. And gasoline is called Benzin - that word has false friend potential because it seems more similar to benzene. It is also not derived from the name of Carl Benz of Mercedes-Benz fame who used it in the first practical automobile that he invented.
namibj 3 hours ago [-]
No, it's from al kali ne.
sndean 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah an apparatus like that and work out that benzene had a very different carbon dioxide to water ratio than something like hexane.
7 hours ago [-]
Horffupolde 6 hours ago [-]
Yes.
quietbritishjim 5 hours ago [-]
I'll admit I know very little chemistry, but I think the article would've been much better for people like me of it included any specific examples at all of benzene uses. It's filled with assurances that it's important and used all over the place but I didn't find that very enlightening.
andrewflnr 5 hours ago [-]
It's kind of hard to explain how widespread a usage like "solvent" is. A huge amount of chemical reactions are most convenient to do in a liquid, a liquid that can dissolve the materials you're working with. That's a solvent. Benzene can dissolve a lot of things, including some that are really hard to dissolve otherwise. So it can be used for a huge variety of reactions, but as the sort background player that you might not pay attention to unless you can't have it.
It's a little like asking "what are the uses of water in chemistry", where you're tempted to answer, "um, everything?" Not quite, but not that far off either. (And with more cancer of course.)
Edit: disclaimer, I'm not a chemist, just an interested layman.
Benzene is used mainly as an intermediate to make other chemicals, above all ethylbenzene (and other alkylbenzenes), cumene, cyclohexane, and nitrobenzene. More than half of the entire benzene production is processed into ethylbenzene, a precursor to styrene, which is used to make polymers and plastics like polystyrene. Some 20% of the benzene production is used to manufacture cumene, which is needed to produce phenol and acetone for resins and adhesives. Cyclohexane consumes around 10% of the world's benzene production; it is primarily used in the manufacture of nylon fibers, which are processed into textiles and engineering plastics. Smaller amounts of benzene are used to make some types of rubbers, lubricants, dyes, detergents, drugs, explosives, and pesticides.
It's an important feedstock in the chemical industry but it is no longer used directly in household products. It used to be common in solvent/glue/grease remover formulations before the health hazard was widely appreciated.
pcthrowaway 4 hours ago [-]
Benzene was what made decaf coffee possible in 1905 (if can you consider this a productive use).
The beans were soaked in warm water then rinsed (several times?) with benzene, which was able to extract the majority of caffeine, and presumably not much else affecting the flavour.
It would have the benefit of evaporating with no residue given enough time, but due to the possibility of residue and the difficulty of working with it safely, decaffeination processes have since moved on.
andygeorge 7 hours ago [-]
I was a kid when there was a Benzene spill up where I lived at the time (Duluth, MN). I remember having to evacuate to our aunt's house out of town. My dad stayed at home doing yardwork until he felt "a little lightheaded" and finally joined us.
Seattle’s Gas Works Park has some strange equipment to address the benzene contamination. Bold move to make industrial sites into parks (it is one of the best in Seattle though!)
3.1 Benzene. On the east side of the Park, south of the Play Barn the groundwater is contaminated with benzene. An interim action removed a benzene containing LNAPL that had been discovered during site investigation. The remedy chosen for benzene was an air-sparging/soil vapor extraction (AS/SVE). The AS/SVE system covers approximately 1.5 acres of the Park. It is unnoticeable to Park users except for a small equipment box near the Towers. . An action level was calculated based on MTCA Method B surface water criteria and a dilution attenuation factor (DAF). The calculation used to set the DAF and the action level for benzene is given in appendix 1.
4.1 Benzene. Benzene concentration in the compliance well OBS-1 remains below the action level but above the method B groundwater cleanup level. The remedy, therefore, remains effective. See figure 3 below.
k__ 5 hours ago [-]
I did an internship at a chemical laboratory once.
The older folks told me that they aren't allowed to use the awesome stuff anymore.
Back in the days, they would use Benzene for everything, the only stuff that would get the lab floors clean at the end of the day.
Same with asbestos, leaded fuel, and whatnot. Compounds that are perfect for their use cases, yet highly toxic.
pumnikol 4 hours ago [-]
One of my elderly colleagues once told me that at the end of each day, they'd put all the lab coats in a big vat of benzene to clean them. The next day, they took them out, let them dry for a short while and then just put them on again. I think it was in the early 80s? He did develop cancer later.
fuzzfactor 3 hours ago [-]
This was the traditional solvent for cleaning up and removing excess ink in print shops all over the place.
Often still known by its archaic name Benzol when I was growing up. In high school, walking by the student print shop you could smell it way down the hall at all times. The chem labs were not nearly as bad because they had better ventilation to begin with.
Plus before my time benzene had also been prized as high-octane motor fuel for early cars back when it was obtained for sale naturally by removal from aromatic crude oils in some refineries. This was not such pure benzene however the significant percentage of impurities at the dispenser acted with an "antifreeze" effect and it handled no differently than regular gasoline below 32 degrees F.
Pure benzene freezes at about 40 degrees F, and that pure of a hydrocarbon ended up being too expensive to burn anyway.
IIRC it can really make a lawn mower cut taller grass than premium gasoline, and scientifically it does have about 100 antiknock rating so it's no surprise.
k__ 3 hours ago [-]
"Often still known by its archaic name Benzol"
In German, that's the regular name, haha.
chasil 2 hours ago [-]
That would actually imply that an OH group replaced one of the hydrogens, forming an alcohol.
Kekule who dreamt of 6 serpents each eating others tail and discovered the hexavalent structure, meanwhile cries in a corner. No mention of Kekule in the article.
(I had the impression from somewhere else that his "reverie or day-dream" might have instead been a pipe dream — as in the literal pipe dream (opium?). But I can now find nothing to substantiate this at all so, maybe just ignore.)
For a tangent on Kekule, I really enjoyed Cormac McCarthy's essay The Kekule Problem - published in 2017 and apparently his first published work of non-fiction.
Omitting such an important story from the article feels sloppy.
For me, no other story from Chemistry is as fascinating as Kekule dreaming up Benzene’s molecular structure. An important reminder to me about the power of narrative and storytelling.
meepmorp 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, and it's especially sad because they specifically mention that the structure was worked out later in the 19th century. Why not include a fun little detail like that?
The answer is probably because the author hasn't taken organic chem and so never heard the story.
carbocation 7 hours ago [-]
This does seem like an important omission.
gavinray 5 hours ago [-]
I immediately "Ctrl+F" for "Kekule" and saw nothing on the page. Disappointing.
When I read a "History of Organic Chemistry" textbook, Kekule and Benzene were essentially the springboard.
4 hours ago [-]
7thpower 3 hours ago [-]
Story Time:
After I graduated, I went to work for a large PE firm that most of you probably hate, working for one of their subsidiaries focused on energy who happened to have a couple refineries. As someone passionate about renewables, I was actually excited to go see the underbelly of one of the most evil companies. I also wanted to learn more about the energy industry and the maze of pipes that looked like steel spaghetti to me.. it was also always in the back of my mind that those student loans wouldn't pay for themselves.
I started off in IT but eventually was fortunate enough to land a job focusing on their developing new products with other portfolio companies that focused on addressing challenges in O&G. One of the things I prided myself on was spending time, boots on the ground, with the people who were doing the day to day work and learning about what there problems were. This included a lot of escorted trips through the plant learning about the chemical processes as well as work processes, etc.
One of the things I had picked up on was how nasty benzene was, this was widely acknowledged at the time by the company, and not in the typical window dressing sort of way that these things are often glossed over.
Well long story short, one day I'm standing on top of grating resting above a concrete pit coming off a refining unit while they are using a truck sized vacuum to extract the liquid (guess what the truck is called), which is told is an every day occurance. Standing a few feet above the liquid, it looks like dirty water. As an afterthought, I ask "what is this liquid?".
"Oh, it's just benzine"
... taps 4 gas meter that's supposed to keep me safe from anything "well isn't this thing supposed to go off?"
"Not all the time"
Never did that again.
I was surprised it was treated so nonchalantly, but when your job is to deal with dangerous stuff day in and day out, I guess certain things don't raise alarms. I, of course, didn't ask what concentration it was, etc., I just filed a few lessons away. But it's always stuck with me how routine some of this incredibly dangerous work can seem, and how difficult it must be to differentiate types of danger when they're not things that are obviously dangerous, such as having your finger chopped off, or worse, ruining a nice set of steel toes.
Anyway, that's my benzine story.
trebligdivad 5 hours ago [-]
The article talks about the wonders of bucky balls and nanotubes - does anyone know what useful stuff has come out of those yet? I think I heard there's some work on nanotubes coming up on transistors in the next gen of chips?
Not sure what bucky balls and other fullerenes are being used for? (I remember originally there was talk of lubricants?)
lightedman 2 hours ago [-]
For useful carbon nanotubes, look no further than nanotape. That shit is extremely strong and will happily peel the paint or wallpaper from your walls.
bell-cot 5 hours ago [-]
> does anyone know what useful stuff has come out of those yet?
Quip: Every chemical researcher's #1 need is for research funding, no?
Brajeshwar 8 hours ago [-]
I realize the article is asking for a login (a free account). Here is the Archived link
I've read that back in the day chemists used to nearly bathe in this stuff. Now it's rarely used in instructional chem labs. Heck as an undergrad in the 90's we were using Potassium Dichromate as an oxidizer. I spilled some on me and it ate through my lab coat and shirt beneath it. Probably should have had an apron on too...
jabl 5 hours ago [-]
I remember in high school chemistry (or physics?) we had a wooden model of the benzene ring with the ground state molecular orbitals. Diameter about 30cm.
scottlawson 7 hours ago [-]
I love articles like this that give the context and history to important but not often talked about molecules. I enjoyed this as much as the "chemicals I will never work with" series.
euroderf 5 hours ago [-]
Benzene must've been examined down to the nth degree in quantum analysis. Maybe there's an article ?
divbzero 6 hours ago [-]
It amazes me that the same person who discovered benzene also discovered electromagnetic induction and Faraday’s laws of electrolysis.
ipdashc 6 hours ago [-]
> and Faraday’s laws of electrolysis
Wow, what are the chances he discovers something with a name like that?
nanna 6 hours ago [-]
And wasn't Faraday also a self-taught amateur whose maths was so poor that he couldn't even do trigonometry?
A beacon of hope for those of us without doctorates in physics out here...
groos 6 hours ago [-]
I once pulled on a glass pipette too hard and got benzene in my mouth. This was 36 years ago, still doing well :-)
chrisjj 3 hours ago [-]
> Celebrating the molecule that changed the world
"The"?? There are multiple.
chasil 7 hours ago [-]
"...benzene holds a special place in education. Generations of high school and university students have been introduced to the elegance of its structure and the profound mystery surrounding its stability."
Admire it from a distance.
"Benzene is classified as a carcinogen, which increases the risk of cancer and other illnesses, and is also a notorious cause of bone marrow failure. Substantial quantities of epidemiologic, clinical, and laboratory data link benzene to aplastic anemia, acute leukemia, bone marrow abnormalities and cardiovascular disease.
"...There is no safe exposure level; even tiny amounts can cause harm."
I want a better list than the IARC because their Group 1 has substances like benzine and asbestos along side things like Alcoholic beverages, Chinese-style Salted fish and processed meat.
jhallenworld 13 minutes ago [-]
I went looking for such a better list. One thing I found is this, for drinking water contaminants:
It would be nice to have a list like this for the Group 1 substances, I mean something that shows the amount vs. the risk and the number of cases caused by the substance.
For benzene in drinking water it has 0.15 μg/L corresponding to 10e−6 lifetime cancer risk. Estimated number of cancer cases from benzene in drinking water in the USA is 1 vs. 43500 from arsenic.
oidar 4 hours ago [-]
The evidence is very strong for all of those. They should be in Group 1.
dekhn 3 hours ago [-]
the evidence may be strong, but the effect size compared to the relative dosing shows they are probably misclassified.
oidar 3 hours ago [-]
The IARC grouping isn't for effect size though, it's for certainty about carcinogenicity outcomes with exposure. It's not going to tell you how much exposure you need to get cancer. There are different measurements for that.
IARC Grouping Levels:
Group 1 - We are certain this will cause cancer
Group 2 - Probable it causes cancer
Group 3 - We don't know if it causes cancer
Group 4 - Unlikely to cause cancer
So when looking at something like tobacco smoking, we have lots of evidence that people who smoke get lung cancer. So it doesn't fit in group 2,3,4. So it goes in group one.
For scales that measure exposure needed for negative outcomes, most of the time these are for chemicals that are/have been used in work environments. So EPA (and probably OSHA) has a threshold scale for benzene, but not for tobacco cigarettes. Most of the time, there aren't MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) for consumer products like cigarettes.
But really, what is more likely - a person getting cancer from tobacco smoking or benzene? I would offer that tobacco is more of a danger than benzene d/t the easily available nature of it. So in practice, tobacco is more of a danger than benzene.
lazide 2 hours ago [-]
That is why the categories are absurd in practical usage.
Benzene will definitely fuck you up faster and more thoroughly at similar dosages than cigarettes.
lazide 2 hours ago [-]
Having a glass of wine a day is extremely unlikely to cause any detectable negative health outcomes.
Replace the alcohol in that wine with benzene (21ml/glass give or take), and it would not play out the same way.
isoprophlex 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, indeed it aint healthy... but that didn't stop me from smelling it just once in undergrad. I had to get at least one whiff of this iconic compount
kybernetyk 5 hours ago [-]
How does it smell?
cenamus 5 hours ago [-]
Sweet, but still kind of like hydrocarbon if I remember right. Definitely strang
ortusdux 4 hours ago [-]
I do miss the smells of O-chem lab. It is like hearing a crips clear note played when you have only ever heard chords. I think my favorite was thymol, a thyme extract. Something I've smelled a thousand times but never in isolation.
dekhn 3 hours ago [-]
I'll never forget bromine, fuming brown off whatever high school reaction we were doing that day.
pumnikol 4 hours ago [-]
Sweet? I'd rather liken it to period blood, but more metallic and kind of... vicious. Its smell is hardly comparable to its relatives xylene, toluene, ethyl benzene.
isoprophlex 3 hours ago [-]
I liked xylene most, followed by toluene. Maybe it's bias because you know it is carcinogenic... but indeed benzene isn't as nice as the others. Vicious undertones, that's very apt.
cwmoore 2 hours ago [-]
Xylene, yes, very dangerous, used some for cleanup after painting swimming pools, threw up in traffic an hour latet.
ortusdux 4 hours ago [-]
That was the smell of cell damage /s
landl0rd 6 hours ago [-]
You can get a little dose and it's likely not going to hurt you. "No safe dose" doesn't mean "any dose is massively injurious". You smell it regularly when you pump gasoline.
Funny enough benzene used to be used (a hundred years ago) for aftershave and even for douches. I don't even want to think about what that did to those people's bodies.
robocat 2 hours ago [-]
> You smell it regularly when you pump gasoline
The EPA limits the percentage of benzene allowed in gasoline to a yearly average of 0.62% by volume (with a maximum of 1.3%).
(Edit: replaced original sentence that was misleading)
When I studied organic chemistry in high school, everything was theoretical and done on paper. We had lab sessions for only inorganic chemistry.
chasil 4 hours ago [-]
In 1986, I made nylon, and I am 98% sure that we had benzene.
ncfausti 5 hours ago [-]
This.
When an alarming number of friends (all under 40 years old) from the same small neighborhood in my hometown were diagnosed with leukemia I started to look into the superfund site nearby. The pond that is connected to the stream that supplies the municipal wells in the area was still disgusting (with visible oily residue on the surface) nearly 15 years after the company, Congoleum, stopped operations and the plant was demolished. Soil testing some years earlier revealed benzene, which has been linked to AML.
cyberax 6 hours ago [-]
It's likely that benzene's danger is a bit exaggerated. Certainly don't smear it casually on yourself, but it's unlikely to be in the same league as something like acrylonitriles.
4 hours ago [-]
aszantu 7 hours ago [-]
Lots of sunscreen and other beauty products seem to be contaminated with benzene. Johnson & Johnson was caught a few times putting it in baby powder or something
dylan604 6 hours ago [-]
J&J's baby powder situation was related to asbestos[0]. So it must be under your "or something" hand wavy qualifier. If you're going to sling dirt, at least make it accurate. The benzene use was in other products like sunscreen[1]
They mention the sunscreen in the other sentence of the post.
I gotta say, your post comes off (maybe I’m misreading it) as a bit critical, given that you seem to agree with the other poster as to the underlying problem (frequent contamination issues).
dylan604 5 hours ago [-]
I'm critical of making correct accusations. Baby powder never had a bezene problem which was being implied. Baby powder definitely had issues, but different issues. J&J as a company definitely plays fast and loose with product ingredients vs health safety, but when making accusations, accuracy is important.
You wouldn't want chatGPT or claude to start saying that J&J was using benzene in baby powder after scraping HN for training data because we played it loose with facts would you? In fact, we call LLM incorrectness as hallucinating, so would you be less upset if I said that the other person was hallucinating?
bee_rider 5 hours ago [-]
Sure. I basically agree that their comment was sloppy, I just think for example:
> If you're going to sling dirt, at least make it accurate.
Something that might fit your sentiment better could be:
> It is right to sling dirt, but it is important to make it accurate.
There’s a ton of pro-corporate propaganda out there, so the good guys should stick together too.
dylan604 4 hours ago [-]
There's another reason too, and inaccurate accusations could become libel/slander for evilCorp to come back at you for making such inaccurate accusations.
badgersnake 5 hours ago [-]
> You wouldn't want chatGPT or claude to start saying that J&J was using benzene in baby powder
That would be annoying, but since everyone checks their outputs against trusted sources, it wouldn’t be a major issue.
dylan604 4 hours ago [-]
oh wow, you just won the "makes me spit up my drink from such an obviously funny lie" of the day line
hildolfr 5 hours ago [-]
Reinforcing the strength of a future corporate product by doing their fact checking for them has got to be one of the weakest reasons for correctness and precision I've ever come across.
Please use a better example for the virtues of being correct, there are heaps better reasons.
dylan604 4 hours ago [-]
In my quick search, the domain names were not filling me with confidence on the reliability of the site. Since J&J released a statement acknowledging their malfeasance, might as well take it from the horse's mouth.
I posted similar photos of other polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) including napthalene, which are also mentioned in the article. [2]
In all, I had about 10 posts on PAH’s for laypeople and chemists who want to admire the structure of these fascinating saturated planar hydrocarbons.
[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/CxUs8YzO28Y/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ...
[2] https://www.instagram.com/p/CxFCSueOrA2/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ...
I also strongly suspect my mother's Benzene exposures (nurse cleaning lab slides with Benzene and no PPE) led to me battling Langerhans Histiocytosis throughout my childhood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langerhans_cell_histiocytosis
How were chemists in the early 19th century able to determine benzene must be highly unsaturated without knowing its structure? Did they simply combust it and measure the amount of water vapor and carbon dioxide produced?
The first step, as people have elaborated below, is combust the compound and measure the weights of various oxides, which (after the atomic masses of the relevant elements were settled around the 1820s) lets you work out the empirical formula of an unknown molecule. For benzene, this would tell you that there is 1 C : 1 H, but this doesn't tell you if it's C₄H₄ or C₆H₆ or C₁₁₁H₁₁₁.
The second step is to determine the molar mass of your compound, which requires finding something that depends on the amount of substance but not the mass directly. (In modern times, this is primarily mass spec). Back in the 19th century, this is probably abusing the ideal gas law, which lets you compute the number of moles in a gas given the pressure, temperature, and volume of a vessel. Combine this with the mass of that container, and you know how much a mole weighs. If you get out, say, 77g/mol, and you know that the ratio is 1 C : 1 H, well, the only formula that makes sense is C₆H₆ (which should ideally have 78g/mol, but you might not get the right answer for various experimental reasons).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliapparat
I believe it's kali from German Kaliumhydroxid[0] (KOH, what it uses to dissolve CO2), from the same "potassium" root as al-kali in English, from medieval Arabic[1]. (And also metonymically a name for the coastal salt-marsh plant[2] from which medieval workers sourced potash/potassium[3]. I actually submitted that plant to HN [4] a few days ago, but no one was excited about it. They were once an essential ingredient in glassmaking, hence their other name, "glasswort").
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaliumhydroxid
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kali#English
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salsola_kali
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash#History
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44128748
Strangely enough, the modern German name is Fünf-Kugel-Apparat, "five balls apparatus". I found that one simply by going through "Other languages" on Wikipedia.
And benzene is called Benzol in German. And gasoline is called Benzin - that word has false friend potential because it seems more similar to benzene. It is also not derived from the name of Carl Benz of Mercedes-Benz fame who used it in the first practical automobile that he invented.
It's a little like asking "what are the uses of water in chemistry", where you're tempted to answer, "um, everything?" Not quite, but not that far off either. (And with more cancer of course.)
Edit: disclaimer, I'm not a chemist, just an interested layman.
Benzene is used mainly as an intermediate to make other chemicals, above all ethylbenzene (and other alkylbenzenes), cumene, cyclohexane, and nitrobenzene. More than half of the entire benzene production is processed into ethylbenzene, a precursor to styrene, which is used to make polymers and plastics like polystyrene. Some 20% of the benzene production is used to manufacture cumene, which is needed to produce phenol and acetone for resins and adhesives. Cyclohexane consumes around 10% of the world's benzene production; it is primarily used in the manufacture of nylon fibers, which are processed into textiles and engineering plastics. Smaller amounts of benzene are used to make some types of rubbers, lubricants, dyes, detergents, drugs, explosives, and pesticides.
It's an important feedstock in the chemical industry but it is no longer used directly in household products. It used to be common in solvent/glue/grease remover formulations before the health hazard was widely appreciated.
The beans were soaked in warm water then rinsed (several times?) with benzene, which was able to extract the majority of caffeine, and presumably not much else affecting the flavour.
It would have the benefit of evaporating with no residue given enough time, but due to the possibility of residue and the difficulty of working with it safely, decaffeination processes have since moved on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Nemadji_River_train_derai...
Edit: better link https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/cleanupsearch/site/2876
Original link was older 2005 report: https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/cleanupsearch/document/1509
The older folks told me that they aren't allowed to use the awesome stuff anymore.
Back in the days, they would use Benzene for everything, the only stuff that would get the lab floors clean at the end of the day.
Same with asbestos, leaded fuel, and whatnot. Compounds that are perfect for their use cases, yet highly toxic.
Often still known by its archaic name Benzol when I was growing up. In high school, walking by the student print shop you could smell it way down the hall at all times. The chem labs were not nearly as bad because they had better ventilation to begin with.
Plus before my time benzene had also been prized as high-octane motor fuel for early cars back when it was obtained for sale naturally by removal from aromatic crude oils in some refineries. This was not such pure benzene however the significant percentage of impurities at the dispenser acted with an "antifreeze" effect and it handled no differently than regular gasoline below 32 degrees F.
Pure benzene freezes at about 40 degrees F, and that pure of a hydrocarbon ended up being too expensive to burn anyway.
IIRC it can really make a lawn mower cut taller grass than premium gasoline, and scientifically it does have about 100 antiknock rating so it's no surprise.
In German, that's the regular name, haha.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_(chemistry)
So Benzol is not benzyl alcohol.
Edit: this is not what I was expecting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzyl_alcohol
(I had the impression from somewhere else that his "reverie or day-dream" might have instead been a pipe dream — as in the literal pipe dream (opium?). But I can now find nothing to substantiate this at all so, maybe just ignore.)
EDIT: perhaps I was reading too much into this page from the Golden Book of Chemistry: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/the-golden-book-of-chem...
https://i.imgur.com/EGyYmkX.jpg
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/16/science/the-benzene-ring-...
For me, no other story from Chemistry is as fascinating as Kekule dreaming up Benzene’s molecular structure. An important reminder to me about the power of narrative and storytelling.
The answer is probably because the author hasn't taken organic chem and so never heard the story.
When I read a "History of Organic Chemistry" textbook, Kekule and Benzene were essentially the springboard.
After I graduated, I went to work for a large PE firm that most of you probably hate, working for one of their subsidiaries focused on energy who happened to have a couple refineries. As someone passionate about renewables, I was actually excited to go see the underbelly of one of the most evil companies. I also wanted to learn more about the energy industry and the maze of pipes that looked like steel spaghetti to me.. it was also always in the back of my mind that those student loans wouldn't pay for themselves.
I started off in IT but eventually was fortunate enough to land a job focusing on their developing new products with other portfolio companies that focused on addressing challenges in O&G. One of the things I prided myself on was spending time, boots on the ground, with the people who were doing the day to day work and learning about what there problems were. This included a lot of escorted trips through the plant learning about the chemical processes as well as work processes, etc.
One of the things I had picked up on was how nasty benzene was, this was widely acknowledged at the time by the company, and not in the typical window dressing sort of way that these things are often glossed over.
Well long story short, one day I'm standing on top of grating resting above a concrete pit coming off a refining unit while they are using a truck sized vacuum to extract the liquid (guess what the truck is called), which is told is an every day occurance. Standing a few feet above the liquid, it looks like dirty water. As an afterthought, I ask "what is this liquid?".
"Oh, it's just benzine"
... taps 4 gas meter that's supposed to keep me safe from anything "well isn't this thing supposed to go off?"
"Not all the time"
Never did that again.
I was surprised it was treated so nonchalantly, but when your job is to deal with dangerous stuff day in and day out, I guess certain things don't raise alarms. I, of course, didn't ask what concentration it was, etc., I just filed a few lessons away. But it's always stuck with me how routine some of this incredibly dangerous work can seem, and how difficult it must be to differentiate types of danger when they're not things that are obviously dangerous, such as having your finger chopped off, or worse, ruining a nice set of steel toes.
Anyway, that's my benzine story.
Quip: Every chemical researcher's #1 need is for research funding, no?
https://archive.is/X1iHZ
Wow, what are the chances he discovers something with a name like that?
A beacon of hope for those of us without doctorates in physics out here...
"The"?? There are multiple.
Admire it from a distance.
"Benzene is classified as a carcinogen, which increases the risk of cancer and other illnesses, and is also a notorious cause of bone marrow failure. Substantial quantities of epidemiologic, clinical, and laboratory data link benzene to aplastic anemia, acute leukemia, bone marrow abnormalities and cardiovascular disease.
"...There is no safe exposure level; even tiny amounts can cause harm."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzene#Health_effects
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240584401...
It would be nice to have a list like this for the Group 1 substances, I mean something that shows the amount vs. the risk and the number of cases caused by the substance.
For benzene in drinking water it has 0.15 μg/L corresponding to 10e−6 lifetime cancer risk. Estimated number of cancer cases from benzene in drinking water in the USA is 1 vs. 43500 from arsenic.
IARC Grouping Levels: Group 1 - We are certain this will cause cancer Group 2 - Probable it causes cancer Group 3 - We don't know if it causes cancer Group 4 - Unlikely to cause cancer
So when looking at something like tobacco smoking, we have lots of evidence that people who smoke get lung cancer. So it doesn't fit in group 2,3,4. So it goes in group one.
For scales that measure exposure needed for negative outcomes, most of the time these are for chemicals that are/have been used in work environments. So EPA (and probably OSHA) has a threshold scale for benzene, but not for tobacco cigarettes. Most of the time, there aren't MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) for consumer products like cigarettes.
But really, what is more likely - a person getting cancer from tobacco smoking or benzene? I would offer that tobacco is more of a danger than benzene d/t the easily available nature of it. So in practice, tobacco is more of a danger than benzene.
Benzene will definitely fuck you up faster and more thoroughly at similar dosages than cigarettes.
Replace the alcohol in that wine with benzene (21ml/glass give or take), and it would not play out the same way.
Funny enough benzene used to be used (a hundred years ago) for aftershave and even for douches. I don't even want to think about what that did to those people's bodies.
The EPA limits the percentage of benzene allowed in gasoline to a yearly average of 0.62% by volume (with a maximum of 1.3%).
(Edit: replaced original sentence that was misleading)
When an alarming number of friends (all under 40 years old) from the same small neighborhood in my hometown were diagnosed with leukemia I started to look into the superfund site nearby. The pond that is connected to the stream that supplies the municipal wells in the area was still disgusting (with visible oily residue on the surface) nearly 15 years after the company, Congoleum, stopped operations and the plant was demolished. Soil testing some years earlier revealed benzene, which has been linked to AML.
[0]https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsona...
[1]https://www.jnj.com/media-center/press-releases/johnson-john...
I gotta say, your post comes off (maybe I’m misreading it) as a bit critical, given that you seem to agree with the other poster as to the underlying problem (frequent contamination issues).
You wouldn't want chatGPT or claude to start saying that J&J was using benzene in baby powder after scraping HN for training data because we played it loose with facts would you? In fact, we call LLM incorrectness as hallucinating, so would you be less upset if I said that the other person was hallucinating?
> If you're going to sling dirt, at least make it accurate.
Something that might fit your sentiment better could be:
> It is right to sling dirt, but it is important to make it accurate.
There’s a ton of pro-corporate propaganda out there, so the good guys should stick together too.
That would be annoying, but since everyone checks their outputs against trusted sources, it wouldn’t be a major issue.
Please use a better example for the virtues of being correct, there are heaps better reasons.