Thread: Beware of Water

Beware of Water
Years ago it was part of my job to write Health and Safety Data sheets for the industrial chemicals which my company sold. Now and again we technicians had a discussion about that ubiquitous chemical - water.

The data sheets were designed to give the user of the product an idea of its chemical properties and importantly its toxicity. Most industrial chemicals in common use are safe to handle so long as the handler knows what not to do with them. Some burn, some emit fumes, some are corrosive, some are mildly harmful if used incorrectly and some are highly toxic unless correctly. A very common perception by the general public is that any ‘chemical’ is ‘evil’ despite the fact that it is only with the use of chemicals that the modern way of life is possible.

However water is one of the few process chemical ingredients which does not carry the stigma of being ’evil’. Certainly without a constant supply of fresh clean water we humans cannot live and perhaps that is why we see it as harmless when it certainly is not. Nevertheless a drink of ice cold water on a hot day is delightful.

Water, arguably best described as an organic solvent, is used as an ingredient in many industrial processes. By any standards of safety, it should carry a hazard warning label on the side of every container.

In general life each day most of us wake up and reach out for a cup of coffee made with boiling water. Boiling water kills both directly and indirectly since scalds can easily turn septic.
To make tea we boil cold water. Yet cold water kills humans by inducing hypothermia.
Frozen water, commonly known as ice, kills in several ways. A lump of it will burn human flesh.
Water is a major carrier and transmitter of diseases amongst which are cholera and typhus.
Yet if we are denied our daily pints of water we shall die from thirst because the very lack of drinking water kills.
Rain, water from heaven, makes us wet and unless we find shelter, copious rain will undoubtedly cause our body temperature to fall and eventually lead to hyperthermia.
Frozen rain, commonly known as snow, makes the surface on which we walk or drive slippery and can result in broken bones and not unusually death in a car accident.
Warm water is a highly effective solvent and without it or a substitute for it we cannot readily clean ourselves and if we tolerate dirt on our body for any length of time the skin is damaged.
Now I could go on, but I think I have made my point. Water kills.

If the same criteria for judging water as are often used for judging relatively innocuous ‘chemicals’ which present little or no hazard to humans, then water must be classified as ‘highly toxic‘. Yet without the constant availability of fresh water, we humans die - or at least begin to smell rather strongly.

However there is one other matter of current significance. As a result of an earthquake and subsequently a tsunami in Japan, an as yet unknown number of Japanese people have died. The tally as of when I write this article is over four thousand and set to rise. These poor unfortunates were not killed by radio activity or even the explosions and fires at a nearby power plant. Most of them were picked up by a massive body of displaced, heavy, incompressible, cold, toxic, sea water and either crushed to death or smothered by floating debris. Many of the missing persons were washed out to sea eventually to freeze or drown and become food for the fishes. One poor man found a raft and was swept out to sea where the coastguard found him miles offshore waiting to die.

The present world wide panic about the possibility of emissions of radio active particles from the power plant is more a fear of the unknown. We can’t see it, we can’t smell it but we all seem to know that radiation might cause cancer. Radiation uniquely provokes fear in the mind - somehow it is invincible. Although excluding the blast victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, relatively few people have actually died as a result of accidental radiation, compared with the number killed by the sequence of tsunamis in Asia.

Incidentally until the operators in the Fukushima plant find a reliable way to cool the fuel rods in with - yes - water - the latest incident will not come under control. At least the plant is located by the sea but if it were not then the Tsunami would not have swept away the oil storage tanks which allowed the rods to heat up because the diesel powered emergency pumps had no fuel. It is as though the sea is determined to kill the power plant.

An uncomfortable truth is that on this world we humans are surrounded by water, whether we like it or not.

In London there is little likelihood of an earthquake but the North Sea might one day rush up the River Thames. Perhaps I should avoid travelling by the London Tube or maybe one day I might drown.

Hello Divus.

Beware of water indeed. It can be both benevolent & malevolent, depending on how we use it right? Not scalding, cooling. Not drowning, nourishing. I would dare say that most of us can think better when we're near water. It's a living thing, or seems to be. But scoop out a jar of it & leave it there & it dies. Turns cloudy & starts to evaporate.

Maybe, as I think you were trying to state in your post, we can inadvertently use it against ourselves. Almost like Frankenstien's monster. Just like any natural resource.

I don't understand why they've stopped pumping seawater into the pools. There's an endless supply of it. I may have missed something. I think they're going to have to seal the affected reactors in concrete, & move on. The men there know they're going to die. They know, as did the men at Chernobyl, that exposure to that much radiation will kill them soon. Are chemicals inherently evil? No. It's how we mishandle them that makes them so. Kind of like the gun that sits at the bottom of a dried up well for decades. Just a piece of metal. Until the wrong person finds it then someone dies.

But we are inherently organic beings. It's the chemicals that we ingest or are exposed to over our lifetime that eventually become a problem.

The people of Japan haven't reached the peak of their problems yet, & they keep getting hammered with one insulting problem after another. Earthquake, tsunami, radiation, snowstorms. What next?

I liked your post. It's what we do with these things that decide whether they're malevolent. At least I think that's what you were saying. Maybe tectonic plates shifting are the earth's way of stretching, with all the distress put upon it (her?). Or just normal settling. I don't know. Thanks for the post.

Divus, you've written an interesting story, without letting the facts get in the way. One item where you went just a tad astray is in talking about the use of water as a means of cleansing the body. In fact, all the water does is rinse away the dirt and germs once they have been loosened from the skin by the hydrophobic molecules in soap or detergent.

Cheers