Posted on 04/30/2013 7:13:47 AM PDT by TSA-Watch
“The moral of the store? Don’t wash your hands after using the bathroom”
In a sane world, the moral would be to eliminate TSA.
My daughter got stopped because her fingernail polish remover triggered a false positive.
Yes and no, glycerin is a form of alcohol and it occurs as a natural constituent in animal and vegetable fats which contain about 7% - 13% glycerine. Glycerin is not an explosive substance by itself. It has to be turned into nitroglycerin before it becomes explosive. Glycerin is hygroscopic and will absorb water vapor directly from the air to about 20% by volume. It is necessary to distill the "contaminated" glycerin to produce pure glycerol before proceeding with the nitrating process. Nitrating involves treating glycerol with a mixture of concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids. The nitrification is done by the nitric acid, the sulfuric acid reacts with the water produced by the nitrating reaction and allows the nitration to proceed to maximum yield of finished product. The last step involves "washing" the finished nitroglycerin to remove all traces of the spent acids. Any residual acid left in the product will reduce it's stability (bad ju-ju!).
Nitroglycerin is only one form of a nitrated explosive. The nitrification process process may be applied to any alcohol to produce, nitropropenol, nitroethanol, nitromethenol, and nitromanatol. PETN is Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, the nitrate ester of pentaerythritol. It is prepared by reacting pentaerythritol, an alcohol used in paints and varnishes, with nitric acid. RDX is cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, another nitrated product; also known as cyclotrimethylene-trinitramine and cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (the Italians call it T4). The Nitrating process can be also used on cellulose to produce nitrocellulose (guncotton aka smokeless powder). Toluene may be nitratred to produce trinitrotoluene better known as TNT.
PETN and RDX are widely used to produce det cord and various plastic explosives, nitroglycerin may be mixed with anything from sawdust, sodium nitrate, Fuller's earth, to nitrocellulose to produce dynamite of varying strengths (40%-100%). And lest we forget, ammonium nitrate is probably the most widely used commercial blasting agent.
From the above listing is should be apparent that the vast preponderance of explosive compounds are nitrates. There are field tests for nitrates that have been in wide use by police for many years. They are commonly used to test a suspects hands and clothing for gun powder residue and have proved to be quite sensitive. Since nitroglycerin is a nitrate it seems redundant to test for glycerin as well. Such testing is bound to generate false positives because glycerin is a common ingredient in soaps, lotions, and cosmetics.
Acetone peroxide (Mother of Satan) is NOT a nitrate and is favored by terrorists. DHS would be well advised to keep their eyes out for that nasty stuff.
Regards,
GtG
PS It should not be necessary to add but do not try this at home as the reactions involved can and do go astray, producing toxic gasses, premature detonations are possible. There are more than a few ways to screw up the process.
Wow really? Fingernail polish? I wonder what ingredient triggered it.
Yes, as is noted at the end of the blog post on the website, under Source.
The polish remover, it’s mostly acetone.
Nah, you listed yourself as the author.
You’re a thief. And a plagiarist.
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