Bob Collins said:
The mystery surrounding MEK is interesting. But the whole "kills on contact" thing appears to be overblown and I'm not entirely sure why. Like any chemical, it has to be respected. But the "danger" of it seems somewhat overblown and I'm not sure where it originates from.
Pretty much the same reason that a Cessna 172 now costs $200,000: Product liability concerns.
Yes it is toxic, especially to those people that are sensitive to it. It will (and has) caused death by asphyxiation when closed up tight in a room with it.
It is flammable, with a high vapor pressure and relatively low flash point. So it will burn well. Not nearly as well as Mogas, but then we all know we shouldn't use that... right?
It fits into the gernal common sense categories of: if you're not sensitized to the material, keep it off of as much as possible, good ventilation, kill your cigarette before opening the can, properly dispose of the waste (I like to leave solvent soaked rags out in the open away from other things that might burn until they dry out). While not overly susceptible to auto-ignition, it does have a nasty reputation for igniting activated carbon from vapor recovery systems!
When I started my career a couple of centuries back (feels like it, anyway), we used pure Benzene to rinse our laboratory glassware, wash our hands, fill our Zippo lighters, etc. There is no quesion that if you did that today you would die a painful, horrible and immediate death. I don't want to minimize the fact that Benzene should not be handled like we did years ago, but many of the warnings you see are there either because of Political Correctness, tort law, or we no longer posess the common sense we were born with!
