Chlorine Trifluoride-producing microorganisms

This isn't going to happen, for a number of reasons (all of which boil down to "It's dangerous, and these bacteria will kill their hosts").

• Organic materials may "spontaneously ignite" when they encounter chlorine trifluoride.
• This thing loves water, to the extent that there will be explosive reactions when the two meet. Water's the solvent of life; try finding a carbon-based life form that doesn't use it in some way - and you'd need to, if these bacteria live in humans.
• Chlorine trifluoride boils at 53°F, so when produced, it's going to be gaseous. If gas gets in your blood you can have problems transporting oxygen. Air embolisms are bad enough; having one from chlorine trifluoride is even worse - never mind its reactivity.
• It's corrosive to just about every part of the body, so if bacteria on the skin excrete it, the organism is going to very quickly get skin damage.
• It's not just chlorine trifluoride that'll kill you; it's the things it produces, including hydrogen fluoride and hydrogen chloride. These then decompose into things like hydrochloric acid, another fun substance to be around.
• The EPA found the chemical is pretty toxic - see Appendix A of their report, where the lethal concentrations are graphed as a function of exposure time. This thing kills quickly.

. . . For more details, please read "Sand Won't Save You This Time", which means exactly what you think it does. Some excerpts:

. . . during World War II, the Germans were very interested in using it in self-igniting flamethrowers, but found it too nasty to work with.

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There's a report from the early 1950s of a one-ton spill of the stuff. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I'm sure no one involved ever forgot.

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It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride. . . . If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.

Yes. Your best chance of surviving the aftermath of that particular reaction with chlorine trifluoride is to simply run away as fast as possible.

By the way, chlorine and related compounds kill bacteria pretty easily. Chlorine is a great disinfectant in a lot of cases, such as swimming pools. In other words, it would be a bit peculiar for a bacterium to take in a chemical containing chlorine and then metabolize it.

Look, chlorine trifluoride is horrifying even by the standards of Worldbuilding Stack Exchange. You don't want to anything that produces it to be within 10 meters of you - let alone on your skin!

posted over 6 years ago

HDE 226868‭

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