NOx harms to my hands

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saadat68

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 7, 2016
Messages
482
Hi
In my first working with Nitric Acid I think NOx harms to my hands. I used gloves but sometimes for agitate solutions no I didn't :!: (I thought NOx have burning and when I did not feel nothing I work without gloves!)

After 3 days still my hands are black and my nails are brown and in sunlight became worse

How I can clean my hands ?! What I can to do ? :cry:

http://uupload.ir/files/0p2_86886.jpg
http://uupload.ir/files/s468_521578.jpg
 
The safety section is here for good reason. It is as important or more important than any of the other sections. Please read it more often and more thoroughly. While making your other posts on any of the subjects it not a bad idea to ask about safety concerns there also. I hate using gloves and always have, but there comes a time when comfort is less important than my safety. Just use your gloves, all the time.
 
Thank you
Yes I will use gloves when working with acid
But is there a treatment for my hands ?
 
Treatment, I am not sure, maybe someone else can answer that. Time will eventually wear it off. Just keep in mind that many metals build up slowly over time in the human body, that is good reason to be extra careful from now on.
 
Time.
Takes a week or more til its gone. Due to the natural growth cycle of your epidermis. Nails will take longer, of course. Until then, you have your very own melt value. :)
 
You can use a nail buff to take off most of the stains on your finger nails. Check the cosmetic section...where the girls go in a store :p
 
Sounds like silver nitrate, it reacts with the skin and turns into metallic silver, just like the black in an old black and white picture.
It will wear off with time, skin is replaced faster than nails, they have to grow out before the marks are gone.

This could be a good time to read up on the MSDS for every chemical you work with or make during refining.

Anyone that has worked with silver knows the look of silver nitrate on skin. So this is the first time you refine silver?

Göran
 
If that come from you dissolving silver oxide batteries then silver nitrate would be the least of what I would worry about. I would be wondering how much of Mercury got absorbed through your skin and lungs.
 
It'll wear off. Don't worry about it. Silver (black, brown) takes from a few days to a week or two. Gold (purple) takes somewhat less time to wear off. About the only thing that will absolutely remove silver stains is cyanide solution but I definitely would advise against that. In the literature, either a sodium thiosulfate solution or household ammonia is said to remove silver stains, although I haven't had much luck with those.

Everything I've tried has made my hands sore, probably because they all require some rubbing using a fairly strong chemical. Less aggravation to just wait until it wears off. Look at it as a badge of honor.
 
Welcome to Silver Nitrate, lesson learnt the hard way, but you are unlikely to forget it.

I believe cyanide leach is the only way to remove Silver Nitrate (not a good idea), just accept that your hands will look like that for a few weeks and learn from your experience.

Edit - Sorry, that sounded a little bitchy, I made the same mistake and also had to learn the hard way. I was very careful to always handle the Silver Nitrate solution with gloves on, but then after the recovery was done and I was cleaning up I picked up a well washed clean looking filter with my bare hands and somehow managed to transfer the weak leftover solution to both hands :cry: Obviously I didn't realize what had happened until hours later.
 
Other than cyanide, you can use bleach for gold, but it takes a long time. It doesn't work for silver, but it tends to convert the black silver stain to silver chloride, which, theoretically, could be removed with the hypo or ammonia. However, soaking your hands in bleach is miserable. You can't completely wash it off and every time your hand is close to your face, you can smell it. The smell can last all day. Also, the terrible slickness on your hand lasts a long time.

Use a pumice stone? After trying every chemical I could think of, I used one for nicotine stains on my fingers and it worked quite well. Haven't tried them on silver or gold stains and I no longer smoke.

When I first started refining, I used a cyanide solution, rinsed it off well and then put my hand in about a very weak, say 1 or 2%, by volume, HCl, then rinsed well, washed with soap, dry, and finally put on some Corn Huskers Lotion. Removal with cyanide is not instantaneous, though. It takes some scrubbing. If you have a scrape or cut on your hand, chances are it will get infected by the use of cyanide.

I have tried about everything and finally decided to not worry about it and just let it wear off. Remember that the cures for this are most always worse than the "disease."

A silver stain on a fingernail will probably be there 'til the nail grows out.

The moral, of course, is to NEVER handle silver nitrate solutions (especially) or gold chloride solutions without gloves.
 
Thank you
Today my skin is better ( not nails ) and as you said waiting to wear off is best choice

I didn't think silver nitrate can be harmful for my hands!
Now I will work with more accuracy

patnor1011 said:
If that come from you dissolving silver oxide batteries then silver nitrate would be the least of what I would worry about. I would be wondering how much of Mercury got absorbed through your skin and lungs.

Can someone guide me about Mercury? I think in my first experience I got much of Mercury too!!!
After leaching with acid under the hood and wait some minutes to cold solution, Can I bringing out solution from the hood for filtering ? In this step how Mercury can harm me ? Gloves and mask is enough for this step ( work on the desk without hood )?
 
Silver oxide batteries contains up to 0.2% mercury. There have been mercury free batteries on the market since 2004 but there are several producers who still sells batteries with mercury in them. So mercury should be expected in any batch with mixed batteries.

0.2% is 2 grams per kilo or 2 kilos per ton.

Göran
 
saadat68 said:
Thank you
Today my skin is better ( not nails ) and as you said waiting to wear off is best choice

I didn't think silver nitrate can be harmful for my hands!
Now I will work with more accuracy

Just to remind all the readers of this thread that all the chemicals we use pose a health risk and even more so once you have metals in solution, please exercise care and spend some time reading the safety thread here on the forum before starting any process, the last thing the owner, mods or regular contributors need or want is stories of people causing themselves, family, pets, neighbours or the environment harm !
 
Then again

Given the amount of time spent on here researching and asking questions I wouldn't have expected you to be doing this without gloves in the first place. Basics basics basics.
 
Hi
Is there a way to clean silver nitrate from my jean and shirt! :oops:

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=25682
 
saadat68 said:
Hi
Is there a way to clean silver nitrate from my jean and shirt! :oops:

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=25682

I think you now have a pair of jeans and a shirt that can be used when you refine. I've always had several sets of those in my closet.
 
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