Deadliest Chemical?

[<Display name here>]

With regards to the NPFA 704 fire diamond, is there any chemical that scores 4 in every single category?

[John Cuthber]

No, because the 4th square doesn't get a number.

 

Arsenic pentachloride might get pretty close to ticking the other 3 boxes. It's hard to say since it's so unstable it hasn't been studied in detail.

[mississippichem]

Any fluorinated halogens probably come close. I know [ce] ClF_{3} [/ce] is corrosive, toxic, an oxidizer, and is generally scary. However, it is not flammable though it can support the combustion of almost anything.

[StringJunky]

I don't know how many boxes this one would tick but Swansont mentioned dioxygen difluoride in his blog once which is explosively reactive even at sub -150c.

 

FOOF is only stable at low temperatures; you'll never get close to RT with the stuff without it tearing itself to pieces. I've seen one reference to storing it as a solid at 90 Kelvin for later use, but that paper, a 1962 effort from A. G. Streng of Temple University, is deeply alarming in several ways. Not only did Streng prepare multiple batches of dioxygen difluoride and keep it around, he was apparently charged with finding out what it did to things. All sorts of things. One damn thing after another, actually:

 

 

"Being a high energy oxidizer, dioxygen difluoride reacted vigorously with organic compounds, even at temperatures close to its melting point. It reacted instantaneously with solid ethyl alcohol, producing a blue flame and an explosion. When a drop of liquid 02F2 was added to liquid methane, cooled at 90°K., a white flame was produced instantaneously, which turned green upon further burning. When 0.2 (mL) of liquid 02F2 was added to 0.5 (mL) of liquid CH4 at 90°K., a violent explosion occurred."

And he's just getting warmed up, if that's the right phrase to use for something that detonates things at -180C (that's -300 Fahrenheit, if you only have a kitchen thermometer). The great majority of Streng's reactions have surely never been run again. The paper goes on to react FOOF with everything else you wouldn't react it with: ammonia ("vigorous", this at 100K), water ice (explosion, natch), chlorine ("violent explosion", so he added it more slowly the second time), red phosphorus (not good), bromine fluoride, chlorine trifluoride (say what?), perchloryl fluoride (!), tetrafluorohydrazine (how on Earth. . .), and on, and on. If the paper weren't laid out in complete grammatical sentences and published in JACS, you'd swear it was the work of a violent lunatic. I ran out of vulgar expletives after the second page. A. G. Streng, folks, absolutely takes the corrosive exploding cake, and I have to tip my asbestos-lined titanium hat to him.

 

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride.php

[zoteman94]

What about dimethyl mercury? Isn't as explosive as other chemicals but can kill easily even if you use protective equipment. By the way, why do you want to know what are the most dangerous chemicals?

Maybe free radicals are even more dangerous, but you can't (as I know) keep them in a container.

[John Cuthber]

This stuff's probably not good for you, but it's a free radical on sale in glass bottles.

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/ProductDetail.do?D7=0&N5=SEARCH_CONCAT_PNO|BRAND_KEY&N4=G307|ALDRICH&N25=0&QS=ON&F=SPEC

 

Of course, so's oxygen, but that's too easy.

 

Dimethyl mercury doesn't react with water and isn't spontaneously flammable in air so it's not that reactive. (though it is very nasty)

[<Display name here>]

but FOOF doesnt have an NPFA standard.