Chlorine is what type of gas

Removing and sealing the clothing in this way will help protect you and other people from any chemicals that might be on your clothes. If you placed your clothes in plastic bags, inform either the local or state health department or emergency personnel upon their arrival. Do not handle the plastic bags. If you are helping other people remove their clothing, try to avoid touching any contaminated areas, and remove the clothing as quickly as possible.

Washing the body: As quickly as possible, wash your entire body with large amounts of soap and water. Washing with soap and water will help protect people from any chemicals on their bodies. If your eyes are burning or your vision is blurred, rinse your eyes with plain water for 10 to 15 minutes. If you wear contacts, remove them before rinsing your eyes, and place them in the bags with the contaminated clothing. Do not put the contacts back in your eyes. You should dispose of them even if you do not wear disposable contacts.

If you wear eyeglasses, wash them with soap and water. You can put the eyeglasses back on after you wash them. If you have swallowed ingested chlorine, do not induce vomiting or drink fluids. Seek medical attention right away. Consider dialing and explaining what has happened.

How chlorine exposure is treated No antidote exists for chlorine exposure. To receive email updates about this page, enter your email address: Email Address.

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CDC is not responsible for Section compliance accessibility on other federal or private website. The only question is: Which form of chlorine should you use? The liquid is sodium hypochlorite NaOCl commonly used as laundry bleach. The solid is calcium hypochlorite [Ca OCl 2], available in granular form or as tablets. In a recent survey of prices in eight regions of the United States, sodium hypochlorite cost two to four times as much per available chlorine as the gas and calcium hypochlorite is three to seven times as much.

Feed equipment design and product packaging also favor chlorine gas. Modern gas feeding equipment occupies very little space—basically, the area of the container less than a square foot for the lb cylinder, and 17 sq ft for the ton containers because the feeding equipment—the chlorinator—mounts directly onto the container. When it comes to actually injecting the chlorine into the water, gas chlorinators utilize a vacuum created by water flowing through a venturi in the "ejector" to draw chlorine directly from the cylinder.

Feeding sodium hypochlorite and granular calcium, hypochlorite slurry requires a metering pump. Calcium hypochlorite in tablet form requires some form of solid metering device. If it is consistency and repeatability of feed rate that is critical, gas is again a good choice. Sodium and calcium hypochlorite degrade as they age, releasing chlorine into the air. This requires constantly increasing the feed rate to maintain dosage level, and doing this typically requires pre- or secondary-mixing.

Changing the feed rate of gas systems, if required, is simply a matter of adjusting a knob on the chlorinator. Moreover, chlorine is used in the development and manufacturing of materials used in products that make vehicles lighter, from seat cushions and seat covers to tire cords and bumpers, according to the American Chemistry Council. The element is also used in organic chemistry processes — for example, as an oxidizing agent and a substitution for hydrogen, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

An oxidizing agent has strong disinfecting and bleaching qualities. When used as a hydrogen substitute, chlorine can bring many desired properties in organic compounds, such as its disinfecting properties or its ability to form useful compounds and materials like PVC and synthetic rubber.

But chlorine also has a dark side: In its natural gas form, it is harmful to human health. Chlorine is a respiratory irritant, and inhaling it may cause pulmonary edema — an excessive buildup of fluid in the lungs that can lead to breathing difficulties.

The gas can also cause eye and skin irritation, or even severe burns and ulcerations, according to the New York State Department of Health.

Exposure to compressed liquid chlorine can result in frostbite of the skin and eyes, the agency reports. In , Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele released a few drops of hydrochloric acid onto a piece of manganese dioxide in his lab, and a greenish-yellow gas was produced in a matter of seconds, according to the American Chemistry Council. However, chlorine was not recognized as an element until several decades later, by English chemist Sir Humphry Davy, and before that, people thought it was a compound of oxygen.

Davy named it "khloros," from Greek word for greenish-yellow, and in , he updated the name to "chloric gas," or "chlorine. Chlorine belongs to the group of halogens — salt-forming elements — together with fluorine F , bromine Br , iodine I and astatine At.

They are all in the second column from the right on the periodic table in Group Their electron configurations are similar, with seven electrons in their outer shell. They are highly reactive elements; when bonded with hydrogen, they produce acids. None are found in nature in their elemental form, according to Purdue University.