Safety
Unlike most organic compounds, benzoyl peroxide is potentially explosive, and, hence, it can cause fires without external ignition. The hazard is acute for the pure material, and for this reason, the compound is generally used as a solution or a paste. For example, cosmetics contain only a few percent of benzoyl peroxide and pose virtually no explosion risk.
Studies have highlighted the carcinogenic potential of benzoyl peroxide. A 1981 study from the journal Science concluded, "caution should be recommended in the use of this and other free radical-generating compounds".
Read more about this topic: Benzoyl Peroxide
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion. He becomes a perjurer, all his thoughts and emotions being directed with reference, not to an accurate and just appraisal of the real world but rather to the safety and exaltation of his loved one, and the madness with which he pursues her, transmogrifying his attention, blinds him like a victim.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Can we not teach children, even as we protect them from victimization, that for them to become victimizers constitutes the greatest peril of all, specifically the sacrifice—physical or psychological—of the well-being of other people? And that destroying the life or safety of other people, through teasing, bullying, hitting or otherwise, “putting them down,” is as destructive to themselves as to their victims.”
—Lewis P. Lipsitt (20th century)
“For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)