Just a quick note about something I read on Discover’s Discoblog today. As a public service warning, I felt it necessary to let you all know that carrying hydrochloric acid on a subway in a glass container may not be your best plan.

This is the story of a 20 year old stone mason who accidentally dropped his bottle of HCl on a Japanese subway. He’s very lucky for a variety of reasons. First, he wasn’t arrested. I mean, this is a country that had a Sarin gas attack from a religious cult (ah, religion… that storehouse of morality)¬†on their subway system in the mid-90s. In this, the age of terrorism, it’s very lucky the guy didn’t end up spending quite some time explaining himself behind bars.

He’s also lucky because there wasn’t that many people hurt, and it seems like most¬†of the¬†accident victims¬†got away with only minor injuries. I’ve seen pictures of how they cram the bodies into a typical Japanese subway, and I can’t imagine how dropping a vial of potent acid didn’t wind up causing some real problems.

Darkly humorous news, but thankfully not anywhere near as bad as it could have been.

Jim