> that benzene is carcinogenic and methanol is poisonous,
> and that all these except H2O2 are flammable. Toluene is not exactly
> harmless, and benzene and especially toluene are explosively flammable.
well, benzene has been branded carcinogenic, and when that
happened, everybody switched to tolulene in the undergraduate
chemistry labs (where it doesn't matter, that is), only because,
A) the two are very similar (esp. when it comes to using them as
solvents for your o-chem experiments)
B) not enough people/rats have been exposed to tolulene long enough
to get cancer (yet). Ergo, it is branded a 'suspected carcinogen'.
|