Don't Try This at Home
Steve Silberman at Wired - the story of the Consumer Product Safety Commission's attack on United Nuclear. I sure wish the wastes of air in gooberment would realize that everything they're doing is bogus prior restraint, and all of it does way more harm than good. Coating the world with nerf doesn't help anybody, except the power crazed. Life is a fatal disease. Risk is necessary. Get used to it. [wired]
Science experiments are United Nuclear's business. The chemicals available on the company's Web site range from ammonium dichromate (the main ingredient in the classic science-fair volcano) to zinc oxide powder (which absorbs UV light). Lazar and White also sell elements like sodium and mercury, radioactive minerals, and geeky curiosities like aerogel, an ultralightweight foam developed by NASA to capture comet dust. The Department of Homeland Security buys the company's powerful infrared flashlights by the case; the Mythbusters guys on the Discovery Channel recently picked up 10 superstrong neodymium magnets. (These come with the sobering caveat: "Beware -- you must think ahead when moving these magnets ... Loose metallic objects and other magnets may become airborne and fly considerable distances.") Fire departments in Nevada and California send for United Nuclear's Geiger counters and uranium ore to train hazmat crews.
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In the meantime, more than 30 states have passed laws to restrict sales of chemicals and lab equipment associated with meth production, which has resulted in a decline in domestic meth labs, but makes things daunting for an amateur chemist shopping for supplies. It is illegal in Texas, for example, to buy such basic labware as Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers without first registering with the state's Department of Public Safety to declare that they will not be used to make drugs. Among the chemicals the Portland, Oregon, police department lists online as "commonly associated with meth labs" are such scientifically useful compounds as liquid iodine, isopropyl alcohol, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen peroxide, along with chemistry glassware and pH strips. Similar lists appear on hundreds of Web sites.
"To criminalize the necessary materials of discovery is one of the worst things you can do in a free society," says Shawn Carlson, a 1999 MacArthur fellow and founder of the Society for Amateur Scientists. "The Mr. Coffee machine that every Texas legislator has near his desk has three violations of the law built into it: a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker, and a heating element. The laws against meth should be the deterrent to making it -- not criminalizing activities that train young people to appreciate science."
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One of the few companies still selling chemistry sets worthy of the name is a German-American venture called Thames & Kosmos, run by former Adobe software engineer Ted McGuire. The company's top-of-the-line kit, the C3000, is equipped with a full complement of test tubes, beakers, pipettes, litmus paper, and more than two dozen useful compounds. But even the C3000, which retails for $200, comes with a shopping list of chemicals that must be purchased elsewhere to perform certain experiments. "A lot of retailers are scared to carry a real chemistry set now because of liability concerns," McGuire explains. "The stuff under your kitchen sink is far more dangerous than the things in our kits, but put the word chemistry on something and people become terrified."
