NIST in suspected 'meth lab' blast: US Congress is demanding answers

Re: lamar looks up

Texas has laws requiring a permit to own laboratory glassware - to stop this science stuff.

It's a pain because the lab supply companies won't ship to Texas because they don't want the trouble of confirming your licence.

Re: proper lab protocol...

"He's not blind due to ethanol being an antidote for methanol poisoning. "

I guess you haven't read the Depression-era stories of moonshiners getting blind or even dying due to drinking the "foreshots" that came out of their illicit stills. Moonshining with plant-based sugars mean you usually have to discard the first few ounces of the distillate (the "foreshot") which contain most of the methanol not to mention other toxic byproducts.

Re: proper lab protocol...

ethanol is still used as an emergency antidote........there was a court case in Scotland two weeks ago where a guy was imprisoned for doping a fellow students bottle of wine. Luckily someone at the hospital recognised the symptoms and forced a bottle of whisky down the victim. Even so he still suffered eye and kidney problems

Re: "NIST Police and Fire Departments"

""The place is so large it has its own resident herd of deer..."

The place doesn't necessarily have to be very large: just with plenty of forest which is their natural habitat. The base near where I live also has a resident herd which you can sometime see in the trees past the security fence.

Re: Desperate.

"And what was wrong with using phenylephrine?" The structure's wrong. If in doubt, look at the pictures on the Wikipedia articles for methamphetamine, pseudoephedrine, and phenylephrine. While you're at it, look at the article "rolling meth lab" too.

"2) anybody with a brain would not start from pseudoephedrine..............." somebody resourceful might.

Was nobody actually -watching- Breaking Bad? Or reading what has been written about the chemistry of Breaking Bad? Only some of it was hokum. [I laughed like a drain when Jesse Pinkman said he'd used indium in the reductive amination.]

There is indeed a well known synthetic route to methamphetamine where the starting material is pseudoephedrine, and that route has one major advantage: you can obtain pseudoephedrine from cold remedies such as Sudafed which are available over the counter in pharmacies.

A rather better synthetic route to methamphetamine is the one starting with methylvinylketone and methylamine; except, those are such well-known amphetamine precursors that attempting to obtain them would likely draw you to the attention of specialist law enforcement.

Re: what was wrong with using phenylephrine?

Because for some people, myself included, phenylephrine is ineffective. For most of the calendar year, I suffer from awful allergies and sinus conditions. Pseudoephedrine allows me to breath normally through my nose. This is especially important at night because I am unable to sleep more than an hour at a time if forced to breath only through my mouth. Breathing through my nose therefore becomes a significant quality-of-life issue. Pseudoephedrine is less expensive than other medicinal or surgical options.

I truly wish phenylephrine WOULD work for me. I am very annoyed at being treated like a criminal every time I go to the pharmacy but, my only choices are be annoyed for a few minutes every two weeks or be miserable all the time.