Subject: Can someone please explain?
Posted by: Mixamatosis
Date: Jan 21 17
I've read that it's dangerous to mix ammonia and bleach. Variously I've read that it can produce deadly cyanide gas, chlorine gas (which is said to be bad for you) and even explosions.
However swimming pools are kept fit for use with chlorine, and our urine contains ammonia but then we may clean toilets with bleach. Also many cleaning products contain either ammonia or bleach and it would be easy to use them unthinkingly in combination.
How is it that people aren't generally harmed by these dangers when swimming in swimming pools or doing daily cleaning, or are we being harmed at low level and is the harm cumulative?
Posted by: Mixamatosis
Date: Jan 21 17
I've read that it's dangerous to mix ammonia and bleach. Variously I've read that it can produce deadly cyanide gas, chlorine gas (which is said to be bad for you) and even explosions.
However swimming pools are kept fit for use with chlorine, and our urine contains ammonia but then we may clean toilets with bleach. Also many cleaning products contain either ammonia or bleach and it would be easy to use them unthinkingly in combination.
How is it that people aren't generally harmed by these dangers when swimming in swimming pools or doing daily cleaning, or are we being harmed at low level and is the harm cumulative?
526 replies. On page 17 of 27 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
brm50diboll 
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I don't read Twitter either. The story was on CNN and can be found by Googling Elon Musk submarine. Actually, I detest social media. I think it only inflames things. My mother and sister have been trying for years to get me to set up Facebook, but I have resisted. They (Mark Zuckerberg, et al) use it to extract personal information from people and sell it to companies (another recent internet story.) Reply #321. Jul 16 18, 1:20 AM |
Mixamatosis
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I've just seen it on the BBC site. It sounds like I was wrong in thinking the British guy asked Musk to be involved. That was what Musk said earlier but now it seems because he was told his device would not be suitable for the purpose he's insulted the British diver in a manner that most people would sue over. He doesn't sound like a nice guy at all. Reply #322. Jul 16 18, 7:02 AM |
| Mixamatosis
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Musk also previously hit out at the Thai official in charge when he was told his mini-sub 'was not practical with their mission'. Reply #323. Jul 16 18, 7:05 AM |
| Mixamatosis
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Just seen a flying car on TV, 'The Kittyhawk Flyer'. It's like something out of science fiction. The goal is to 'eliminate traffic' apparently, but will it be eliminated if it's just transferred to the air? Also there may be privacy and noise pollution implications unless there are regulations to prevent those. Imagine sitting in your garden trying to have a peaceful and private time with these cars flying overhead. Reply #324. Jul 19 18, 6:34 AM |
| brm50diboll
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You definitely wouldn't eliminate traffic problems with flying cars. You would make them exponentially more difficult. As it stands now, we barely have enough air traffic controllers to manage the air space as it is, and this is with highly trained pilots who understand they need to follow controller directions. Now imagine every 16 year old boy has his own flying car. Do you think "Bubba" will respond to the controller directions that he shouldn't do loop-de-loops over his girlfriend's house? I can see it now: "Well, now that your boy Bubba is flying, Mr. and Mrs. Gump, your monthly flying car insurance premium will now go to $20,000." Reply #325. Jul 19 18, 1:23 PM |
| Mixamatosis
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Good points, and they've yet to resolve some of the issues with driverless cars on the roads. Reply #326. Jul 20 18, 2:27 AM |
| brm50diboll
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That is another "pipe dream" that just isn't going to happen anytime soon (decades). No computer system, even advanced AI, is capable of anticipating or responding to *all* possible contingencies that may occur on the road. A driverless car system that is programmed to stop when conditions aren't completely safe will lead to hopeless unresolvable traffic jams because some car will stop for some reason, causing all the others to stop and none of them will be able to restart. Executives who think they will be able to move to fully automated systems to save labor costs are *fools*. Machines are tools of humans that must be operated by humans. They are not capable of doing any tasks themselves that are more complicated than simple repetitive actions. No robot will replace surgeons. Surgeons will operate robots to get greater control of operating fields than is humanly possible, but robots will not do surgery by themselves. Anyone silly enough to ride in a driverless car on an open city street should also think that buying a one-way ticket to Mars is a good idea. And machines break down and require maintenance (from humans). I have worked in office settings enough to know how inconvenient it is to wait for a repairman to fix an office copier, a device absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of an office. Now multiply that by 10,000 and you will get some idea of what will happen to city traffic if we replaced autos with driverless autos. We've already had several trials of driverless cars in very controlled situations that have resulted in injuries and even deaths. This definitely can't work in real situations where it rains, people jaywalk, animals cross the roads, potholes or other road hazards exist, and on and on and on. Not gonna happen in my lifetime. Reply #327. Jul 20 18, 5:15 AM |
| Mixamatosis
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It seems like a lot of money is being invested in driverless car technology. Would you call that a 'boondoggle' then? Reply #328. Jul 20 18, 3:42 PM |
| brm50diboll
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If it is private money, I don't care. The penalty for failure when private money is involved is bankruptcy, which is appropriate, because it limits further damage. When good money is poured after bad, and the money is public, then *that* is a boondoggle because the waste of money not only continues, but accelerates. I am fine with small scale research into driverless technology, which is actually what is going on right now. Not a great burden on the taxpayer, digging the world's deepest money pit. It is the foolish predictions by government officials who actually expect this technology to become applicable on a widespread basis in five or ten years that is objectionable. This is wishful thinking. The politicians and bureaucrats *want* it to be true because they think it will solve environmental problems, but wanting something to be true doesn't make it happen, and the next step in fallacious reasoning, which is that we can make something happen sooner by pouring government money into it, needs to be actively resisted. Driverless cars will work in a very tightly controlled, small scale, experimental environment. They will fail if tried on a large scale. This is today's equivalent of the 1950s Disney Tomorrowland idea that the world of the future would have monorails connecting all the cities. The technology just wasn't there to be practical, and may *never* be, absent some massive technological breakthrough we can't even imagine now. A practical understanding that cars driven by fallible humans, with all their drawbacks (safety, environmental, aesthetic, etc.) are going to be with us for the foreseeable future would be a good start. Then we could work on the practical matter of limiting the downside of private, human-driven cars instead of pretending we can get rid of them. You will no more get rid of private cars in Texas than you can get rid of pubs in England. Reply #329. Jul 20 18, 7:39 PM |
| Mixamatosis
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I think in the UK they are focusing more on electric cars as a solution to road pollution. I remember hearing some news item about an aim to have electric car charging points in every house by some future date. I wonder whether that will be mandatory for those of us who don't have cars. People in London sometimes choose not to have one because there's often no need on a daily basis, as there are such good public transport links. I'm glad to say that a big 'boondoggle' project in London was quashed by the present Mayor, not long ago - the 'garden bridge'. It would have been a terrible and unnecessary waste of public money. It was a vanity project of the previous mayor. Reply #330. Jul 20 18, 11:50 PM |
| brm50diboll
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Now I have no problem whatsoever with electric cars. The technology is not completely "there" yet. Present models are too expensive and there are not enough electric charging stations (almost nonexistent in Texas, actually) to have much of an impact on overall auto sales. In Texas, we think nothing over driving hundreds of miles in a day in our cars. Interstate 10 in Texas from Orange (the Louisiana border) to El Paso (the New Mexico border) is over 800 miles and I have driven it in one day before. This kind of driving cannot be done with an electric car at present. Until prices fall enough and technology improves more, electric cars will be a tiny percentage of the US market with its wide open spaces. Reply #331. Jul 21 18, 1:22 AM |
| Mixamatosis
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Yes, I think electric cars might be more popular for local journeys in cities rather than long distance - places like London in fact, but as you say electric sales are a small percentage or sales at the moment. I think the plan to put charging points in houses is in order to boost the sales of electric cars. Today I noticed that a bus on the route that runs past my house was either electric or hybrid. I wasn't close enough to see which but I could tell from the sound it made when starting off. I have travelled on a hybrid bus once, on another bus route, and it was most odd because you got no sense of the bus gradually starting or stopping the way you do with conventional buses. The first time I knew or felt it was starting or stopping was when my body was physically jerked or flung by the motion. It didn't feel too safe. I've not encountered one since so the technology may have evolved more by now. Reply #332. Jul 21 18, 6:35 PM |
| brm50diboll
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Electric technology, like mass transit, will work in areas of high population density. Unfortunately, most politicians and bureaucrats live in areas of high population density and do not recognize these technologies will not work in areas of lower population density. They assume that because they mean well, everything will work out. The world is a big place and people have to be able to travel where they need to go, not just restricted to "hamster cages". The traditional gasoline-powered internal combustion engine is going to be with us for quite a while, yet. It is necessary for the world economy. Reply #333. Jul 21 18, 8:30 PM |
| Mixamatosis
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I wouldn't say that politicians here generally live in places of high density populations. The ones in power at the moment are usually wealthy and live mostly in the countryside and the road lobby is strong here. Some may have a flat in London but they generally don't use public transport, so I think for those reasons the petrol driven car will be around for a long time. Though public transport is good in London (because regulated). It's generally awful outside of metropolitan areas because it's not regulated and services are getting worse as local councils don't have the money to subsidise services. There comes a point when passengers desert services that are too infrequent so they are even less viable and it's a vicious circle. Reply #334. Jul 22 18, 1:42 AM |
C30
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Mixamatosis..............I live "suburbia"........outskirts of medium sized coastal town and we "enjoy" a reasonable bus service. However............they stick to main routes and do not much enter residential areas. So........hypothetical situation........I need to visit local hospital....distance about 4 miles, travel time in car (allowing for hold ups) 15-20 minutes in rush hour....10 minutes outside of it. Using public transport.....:- Walk to bus stop (at my age and condition) 10 minutes wait for bus (supposed to be every 20 minutes)..say 10 mins wait get bus to town centre..........15 - 20 minutes trip get off bus, walk to another bus stop.......10 minutes wait for bus..........10 minutes trip to hospital.......20 minutes. walk from nearest bus stop to hospital....10 minutes. Total time approx. 1hour 10 minutres Guess which mode of transport I use! Reply #335. Jul 22 18, 2:27 AM |
| C30
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Further to above.................back in 1970's/80's my parents lived in a small village on Essex/Suffolk border, 3 miles from nearest town. Two bus companies operated this route............ONCE a week! On a Thursday one company ran a bus at 0830.......returning at 1700. The other company ran one on a Saturday, at 1100, returning at 1600. Time of trip in car....10 minutes. I wonder why people don't use public transport more in suburban/rural areas? Hardly rocket science to work out why, is it? Reply #336. Jul 22 18, 2:33 AM |
| brm50diboll
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They don't use it because it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist because it's not economical. And I'm talking about people who *work*, the lifeblood of our economy, not people who have nowhere else to go but to a few places in their community. In places like rural Texas, you have to be able to travel hundreds of miles on short notice. No bus or train can get you where you need to go (which for people who work, isn't the hospital, the doctor's office, the pharmacy, the grocery store, and the church, it's hundreds of different places in nearby towns at odd hours of the day and on weekends.) People who do not live in metro areas and work need cars. Politicians should get out of their capital city bubbles and visit "flyover country" to see how people really live. It is foolish to even think public transport would work in areas like this. Reply #337. Jul 22 18, 10:53 AM |
| Mixamatosis
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I've always recognised that people in rural areas need cars. I'm sure I would have one myself if I lived in a rural area, though my sister in law who lives in a rural area now manages without one. She's lucky enough to live a few metres from a main road with a decent bus service to the nearest big town where other bus and train connections are available. Also, she does have 3 grown up children living not too far away who drive and who will help where journeys are tricky. I recognise that cars are pretty essential in the USA where you are often covering large distances and need the flexibility a car offers. The thing is eventually people get too old to drive and if there is no bus service they become dependent on others, if others will help, or taxis, if they can afford them. Where there's a grey area, is where good bus services do exist but are cut because of central government cuts and squeezes on local government finances. It was notable when this was happening in the former prime minister's local area that one of the most vociferous complainers was his auntie. who attended a protest march about it and his mother who signed a petition against it. Probably nothing more to say on the subject now. Reply #338. Jul 22 18, 11:14 AM |
LoveAnimals555
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Looks like there have been a lot of discussion in my absence, may I join in back? Reply #339. Jul 28 18, 10:04 PM |
| Mixamatosis
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Of course. Anyone may join in at anytime. These boards are not exclusive. I wish more people would comment on more subjects. Many boards are sadly neglected or dormant. Reply #340. Jul 29 18, 12:08 AM |
526 replies. On page 17 of 27 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
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