Since teaching a recent class we are bringing up the topic of something we may consider basic but is the foundation of all of the Hazmat operations we do.

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Its time to do a bit of a back to basics podcast. Talking about ways that vapor pressure will change your operation. Just to be on the same page what is vapor pressure? It can seem kinda complicated, but it really comes down to how quickie a product will evaporate at a given temperature.And that given temperature is huge key to really understanding vapor pressure. We see it in our research as a static number. We even teach it as a static number but it really isn’t. Temperature plays such a critical role in a substances vapor pressure. We teach as static so its really not the fault of a new student. We Talk about water being 18 to 25 mm of mg. But we really we should talk about it as the rangne that it is we should be explaining is 0 to 720. At 32 degrees f the vapor pressure is 0 and at 212 degrees the vapor pressure is 760.But here is the interesting part. The only things we can say for sure is that as temp goes up the vapor pressure goes up. But not in a liner form. For water as the temperature goes up the vapor pressure goes up slowly at first. Meaning it takes alot of temperature or heat to go from 0 to say 100 mm of Mg then to go from 600mmg to 700 mm of mg.This gives us a graph that kind looks like a skate boarind ramp. Were it is curved. IF your a math person it is like a exponential curve.But and this is the reason we probably dont teach much of this. This curve is unique to the magnetic properties of water. The same properties that make water a good solvent also give it this ability to resist increase the vapor pressure in the low end of the temperature. And that is magnetism. The magnetic or dipol moment properties of waters is what does this. Because the water wants to stick together it reduces its abitly to evaporate until it has enough energy in it to overcome the dipol moment and then it can more readily evaporate. Propane on the other had has no dipol moments. It has no positive side of negative side. As a result its vapor pressure temp curve looks alot different. As a liquid it takes less energy or temperature to raise the vapor pressure when its close to zero vp as when it is closer to its boiling point. And as long as we are talking about changing the temp and charts once it becomes a gas it takes on a more traditional curved ramp shape.Ok so we started this by talking about ways that vapor pressure effects our operations. Lets first start with respiratory protection. I dont want you to think this is the only factor that goes into respiratory protection but it deffeinly is a factor.We look at vapor pressure when ever we are interested in protecting our lungs.Now again this is in conjunction with lots of other factors. But the vapor pressure will compound the other factorsFor example lets look at a strong acid. Nasty nasty stuff. But only if it comes in contact with our tissue. If I have a product that has a low vapor pressure then its not putting out much product which mean that its not going to come in contact with my lungs.We balalcne this idea with how toxic a substance is. If this substance is toxic is supper low amounts then maybe the vapor pressure even if low will produce enough product in the air to mess us up.So how do we know. Well this is where our meters come into play. Now obviously we cant detect everything but between colometerics such as ph and tubes, pid, co cross senstiviey we can cover quite a bit.