It doesn’t really take a science degree or to be a chemist to know that mixing certain chemicals together isn’t necessarily the best idea. So the question is, when the time comes, how do we know if mixing certain chemicals will be safe? Thankfully, engineers at the University of California, Riverside have created an app for that.
Dubbed ChemStor, this app draws data from the Environmental Protection Agency of 9,800 chemicals which have been organized into reactivity groups. Based on this data, it then creates a chemical interaction graph in different colors to set them apart. From this, it will be able to tell users if certain chemicals can be mixed or stored together without creating a dangerous reaction, and which will.
For those who are wondering if such a system is necessary, according to the Centers for Disease Control, they have estimated that there are at least 4,500 injuries a year that are caused by mixing incompatible chemicals together. Some of these incidents don’t take place in labs, but at the home by mixing pool cleaning chemicals together.
It also takes place in factories where sometimes certain chemicals that aren’t meant to be combined together are accidentally mixed when they are combined in a waste container. ChemStor is currently an open-source program and if you’re interested, you can actually check it out over at GitHub.
Filed in . Read more about Apps and Science. Source: news.ucr.edu