At times, there’s a thin line between downright stupidity and overwhelming curiosity. Here’s my dry ice story.
One time, an order of frozen reagents came in and was shipped in dry ice. I had a legit hypothesis and my goal is to carbonize water. After all, if conditions are right with temperature and pressure, it should be possible. I even thought I was pretty smart at the time. ?
What if I place a piece of dry ice in a small reagent bottle, add a little bit of water, and seal the bottle to see what happens next. Sounds about right, but I bet you can guess what happened next.
The release of carbon dioxide gas within the tiny bottle was too great, that the entire bottle exploded!! Tiny glass shards flew everywhere and I am just glad no one else was there! I had a little cut on my right ear and one on my arm.(Thank God that’s all I got). But my embarrassment has just began.
Blood was gushing from my tiny cut and I started to panic. I grabbed a bunch of paper towels and used them as bandages. When that didn’t work, I flushed then down the toilet (bad move!) and it clogged the toilet. The phone started ringing. I had an outpatient who needed a blood draw. Uh-oh now the draw room looks like a murder scene as I got blood all over the phone, and some on the walls. ?Another phone call came in, this time it was a physician who had some questions and wanted me to come see him. I wasn’t even done cleaning up my own blood!
Finally, I had to swallow my pride and went to the ER. I had to answer the most embarrassing question ever, “What happened?”. My face turned red in embarrassment as I shamefully narrated the past 30 minutes of my life.?
I had to man up and own up on my stupidity at the time. I can’t believe I did that, and I think now I know better and sure as heck that it ain’t going to happen again!!
Each time I see dry ice, it reminds me of my humorous, yet embarrassing experience trying to carbonize water and ended up bloodied in the ER. ?
Submitted by:
Ian Glenn Tiu
Laboratory Manager
Iowa USA
Never a good idea to play with anything at work especially when it turned into a bloody mess 😅
OMG
Hope you learned your lesson 😱