Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp said:
Gentlemen: Having been intimately associated with cyanide for a period in my sheltered life and finally being poisoned by it through carelessness, I have a deep appreciation for it, and it's effect.
As a result of my unpleasant experience, I have become sensitized to cyanide and can detect an open barrel of it to 20 meters, or, even where it has been used in the past for mineral processing.
I have won a no.of bets on this ability. Look for a person that also has this ability as a human detector.
Basically Cyanide needs to come into contact with an acid, your tummy works just fine for this, to form the hydrocyanic acid gas which is the lethal form. Normally just contact with the bare skin is not deadly, unless you have a cut or other way for it to enter the body. In fact I have seen our Indian workers handling it with their bare hands, until I jumped them.
The question that always comes to my mind, is just why would they do this? Even if it killed a few workers, the others would soon return with better protection since they would now be sure that this was a prize worth the risk.
Incidentally the enemy of cyanide is oxygen.
Of course anyone that believes that they might be coming into contact with cyanide, should always check the latest information on how to safely handle it, not just take my data here as the bible. I have been wrong many times as swr can happily testify.
Don Jose de La Mancha
Don Jose, Hi. Well I will disagree with you in part about cyanide. Of the many hats I have wore over the years, including as a mining geologist and manager of a gold refinery that did cyanide extraction among other methods. There is no safe way to handle cyanide. Any contact with the powder and the human body is deadly. Because of the chemistry of the human body, skin, any contact is fatal. You can not wash it off or brush it off and it only takes a small amount to kill. Inhaling any dust is FAST, skin contact, the oils and moisture in the skin make it irreversible. There was a case on Mindanao in 1995 where a group of tribals found a 'black coffin' in the back of a Jap truck that was sealed in a cave. First the tribals drug out the coffin and smashed the lid off of it. Full of diamonds, belong to a Dutch trading company, so labeled. And naturally they shoved their hands into the batch then the group started dropping dead !!! They figured bad spirits so they brought in their Witch Doctor. A little mumbo-jumbo and they tried it again. More dead. So they call me. We go there and I said take a shovel and scoop out some diamonds and put them in a bucket of water and soak a few minutes. They did and then we gave the water to a pig. The pig dropped dead on the spot. So I washed some of the diamonds in a little water and tested it with PH paper. There was a PH change in the water, cyanide does that. Two simple tests.
So, I instructed the tribals to scoop out the diamonds with a small hand shovel and boil them in hot water over a camp fire. Washed them with hot water and liquid soap. DON'T use any acid solution as it will produce cyanide gas, but, liquid soap is alkaline and will lift off the cyanide but not chemically alter it to a gas. Dumping the contaminated soapy water into a pre-dug pit.
Just to show treasure fever, after all that help what do you think they offered me? Zip. The laugh was on them, when they tried to sell the diamonds the PH military came in and took everything. All I wanted was the truck for my collection. Jap trucks are getting hard to find.
ZOBEX
I liked my reply better . Applies to SWR as well .
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