puma guy wrote:Proabably tetrachloride or trichloroethane. The refinery I worked at produced aromatic hydrocarbons, one of them was pure benzene and all the old timers used it to clean oil and grease from their tools as well as their hands and arms. We don't have numbers on how many died of leukemia!Lena wrote:Never have yet, in the service we had to soak the 6 barrels from the M134's in carbon remover which would literally freeze your hands and bleach them white when you removed them, I don't remember what it really was but it sure cleaned them great. I bet now you would have to have a boo suit to use that stuff.
Years ago I worked in a company where they used some chlorinated solvents to clean the rocket propellant off of the tooling. Many operators washed their hands in it. It worked well.
At the Firestone tire factory in Salinas, CA they used benzene as a solvent in their process. Most of the workers didn't use any PPE when handling them.
I have read that some workers developed leukemia later on in life.
That said, I don't use gloves when I clean my firearms.
Heavy nitrile gloves are the best for handling most chemicals.