alt Hacker News"...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."
Replies
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
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.
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.
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.
When I studied organic chemistry in high school, everything was theoretical and done on paper. We had lab sessions for only inorganic chemistry.
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
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.