A chemical burn occurs when living tissue is exposed to a corrosive substance such as a strong acid or base. Chemical burns follow standard burn classification and may cause extensive tissue damage. The main types of irritant and/or corrosive products are: acids, bases, oxidizers, solvents, reducing agents and alkylants. Additionally, chemical burns can be caused by some types of chemical weapons e.g. vesicants such as mustard gas and Lewisite, or urticants such as phosgene oxime.
Chemical burns may:
- need no source of heat,
- occur immediately on contact,
- be extremely painful, or
- not be immediately evident or noticeable
- diffuse into tissue and damage structures under skin without immediately apparent damage to skin surface
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Famous quotes containing the words chemical and/or burn:
“We are close to dead. There are faces and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway, in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin, preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“My faith shall wax, when thou art in thy waning.
The world shall find this miracle in me,
That fire can burn when all the matter’s spent:
Then what my faith hath been thyself shalt see,
And that thou wast unkind thou may’st repent.—
Thou may’st repent that thou hast scorn’d my tears,
When Winter snows upon thy sable hairs.”
—Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)