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No shortage of slime supplies in Dedham
By adamg on Sat, 03/25/2017 - 2:31pm
The Dedham Staples has all your essential slime supplies. But kids, make sure to wear gloves, unless you want to get third-degree burns and wind up on Channel 5.
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Comments
Fake news slime
For three weeks now I have been driving around after picking my kids up from school trying to keep them supplied with white glue - luckily a couple of them play Pokemon Go so the travel to retail areas helps them stock up on Pokeballs. The automated inventory systems of at least eight stores in our areas were unprepared for the product demand. None of my kids or any of their friends have even had their hands turn red from this fad.
There is more to the sensationalist stories than simply making slime - either oddball ingredient use or allergy. Between making it and playing with it, my kids have had their hands immersed in this stuff for weeks now. I read a few stories out there and there is a total lack of facts. The UK articles I read come across as hit pieces on Borax.
I find this strange, too
I wouldn't bet on borax by itself. If the kid had lung problems, maybe. But the skin burns are really not consistent with the existing safety data on borax that was developed from occupational literature.
https://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search2/f?./temp/~ZZ0x4F:3
There is some evidence that workers with their hands in it for full shifts for a long time do suffer from dermatitis, but not from burns. Given the time it took to develop, she may have severe dermatitis - her hands look like a really bad case of poison ivy (not likely this time of year). I'm thinking that it is possible that, since borax is mined and packaged, something got into the borax that could cause this horrible skin damage - like a lot of boric acid.
Either that, or there was something in the glue or the girl was sensitized to the glue. That's also possible given the mix of things in that!
Borax is a buffer, you'd need
Borax is a buffer, you'd need tons of acid to shift the pH. A weak acid like Boric acid isn't going to do that (especially since they have the same pKa). People used to do laundry in borax solutions all the time -- by hand.
My money is on random allergies in each case. Probably not even to the same ingredient(s).
"Fake news?"
I agree that there is more here than meets the eye -- an idiopathic response of some kind -- but generally 'fake news' refers to completely false stories that are made up out of whole cloth, which this obviously isn't.
Perhaps it should be referred to...
...as "unnecessary news" or "not news" rather than fake news. Although what happened to this child is unfortunate, I'm not sure it's newsworthy. Local TV news now features an overabundance of stories on stranded animals, sick children getting wishes granted by police, sports figures, and superheroes, the latest goings on of Marathon survivors and rescuers, and the like. These stories may be heart rending, but they are not NEWS. IT used to be that there would be one or two such items occasionally as a feature-y, human interest type of story to break up the hard news. Now it seems half the news is comprised of this infotainment!
I am no chemist, but I do
I am no chemist, but I do have a lot of experience handling PVA glue, never knew anyone with any burns from it. Laundry, detergent, on the other hand, is pretty nasty stuff and is not intended for prolonged skin contact... pure borax is probably fine. I think it's the detergent that people should be worried about.
What's with the Tide?
I used to make it with PVA glue and borax; there was no laundry detergent involved.
As for laundry detergent, I once spilled some on my running shoes, hopped in the car for a 2 hour drive, and, about an hour in, realized that my feet were hurting plenty bad. I pulled off at the next exit, washed my feet in the gas station bathroom, bought a bag of ice and left it on my feeet for the rest of the trip.. but the stuff had, in fact, eaten a pretty good sized hole in the skin on my foot. This was ordinary mainstream detergent.
-- there was no laundry
-- there was no laundry detergent involved. --
My kids use shaving cream instead. They say it cuts down on the tackiness and masks the light but lame smell of borax and glue.
I was responding to the photo
which has Tide prominently featured, but no Borax. Laundry detergent is pretty harsh stuff; among other thing it has enzymes intended to attack protein stains; protein being the stuff we're made of.
Yeah, laundry detergent does
Yeah, laundry detergent does not seem to be a substance which you would want to handle with bare hands for prolonged periods
More WCVB fake news
The minute I saw that Channel 5 story I knew it was fake news. The mother knowingly lets her child stick her hands in Borax and other chemical substances for an extended period and then runs and calls Channel 5 when adverse effects occur? And the histrionic, near hysterical reaction of Maria Stephanos and Ed Harding is a prime example of how cheesy local news has become.
"chemical substances"
You are perhaps referring to "chemical substances" such as salt, milk, water, hand cream, shampoo, baking powder, bubble bath, etc? I had no idea that chemical substances were something to be worried about.
Borax is pretty benign.
And, if someone -- even a small percentage of people -- develop a severe reaction to a widely-distributed fun recipe, isn't getting it into the news an entirely appropriate and beneficial response?
Nobody's forcing anybody to watch it. they're delivering what their market wants.
"they're delivering what their market wants"
Is it the job of the news to "deliver what their market wants" or to report the news?
Nice To See My Namesake's Namesake's Product Is Still So Popular
Could someone explain what
Could someone explain what this is about?
It's a tweener thing
If you mix glue, detergent and various mixins, you can make this gloppy slime stuff that you can then sell at your local middle school. Seriously. There's been a national shortage of Elmer's Glue of late and everything.
Google search: diy.
Google search: diy.