It was a fad for a long while when most lay people didn't get the joke to hand out petitions to ban dihydrogen monoxide. Dihyrdrogen monoxide, or DHMO, was found in tumors of terminally ill cancer patients, was shown to be a contributor to the greenhouse effect, and could cause severe burns when in a gaseous state. High school students would often be surveyed to see what their opinions were on this substance and if it should be banned after learning it was often used as an industrial solvent and could be found in most home cleaning products. At one point I believe there was a legitimate movement in California to ban the substance, but I'm not positive.
Of course, if you get the joke, then you are not deeply concerned by the health hazards of DHMO, because dihydrogen monoxide, in the language of chemistry, means two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, H2O or water. Those who the prank has been played on can all have a good laugh about how worried they were when water was presented as some "Chemical" with a sciency sounding acronym. Unfortunatly, some people apparently are still concerned.
The Washington Times recently reported that large quantities of nitric acid were discovered. My first impression as a chemist is they would want to use the nitric acid as a reagent to make explosives. Nitric acid is a key ingredient for making TNT. The other possible alternative would be to add nitric acid to bombs. Nitric acid, if you look at its material and data safety sheet (MSDS) you find it is highly corrosive and can cause sever burns and can be fatal if enough is ingested. However, nitric acid is a liquid at room temperature and its unlikely you could deposit enough on someone via a bomb to do permanent damage unless it got in their eyes.
So, either the terrorists are making homemade explosives now or planning on adding nitric acid to bombs to make them more painful, if not more deadly. This is a concern, of course, but not something too big. Afterall, nitric acid is one of the most common industrial chemicals on the market. It's not like this is some sort of chemical weapon like mustard gas.
But over at Red State, the title of the article reporting on the nitric acid was:More chemical weapons found in Iraq
.........
Wait, could they seriously be implying?
So, the bad guys are making chemical weapons in Iraq...chemical weapons are classified by the UN as WMDs...so there are WMDs in Iraq...wait. That can't be right. The reality-based community said they weren't.
They actually said it. Nitric acid is a weapon of mass destruction. Now lets be clear for a moment, nitric acid is a chemical in every high school chemistry lab in America. It has endless uses from simple acid base reactions to forming explosives, you can buy 5L of it for roughly $60 How does one take a chemical that Andorra could stockpile if it wanted to and claim it's evidence of WMD's? As luck would have it, a comment on the RedState article helps clarify
Nitric acid is a chemical.
It is used as a weapon.
It becomes a chemical weapon.
Put simply: HNO3 + bomb = chemical weapon.
This is similar to the terrorists (sorry, you call them "insurgents") exploding canisters of chlorine, using it as a chemical weapon.
Let's review.
Dihydrogen monoxide is a chemical
It could be used as a weapon
It becomes a chemical weapon.
This is is both saddening to see how pathetic the idle attempts to vindicate the Saddam had WMD's arguement is and also endemic of a massive ignorance of basic chemistry and a lack of critical thinking on the part of those who wrote the article. To their credit, quite a few commenters noted the oddness of the claim and many went so far as to point out the properties of nitric acid as I have. However, just as many held to the opinion of the article that nitric acid was a 'chemical weapon.'
This to me demonstrates a terrible, ignorant, knee jerk reaction to the impression of science that many people have. Maybe you remember the jokes about someone's epidermis showing, or perhaps you saw the survey where over half of the people questioned said they wouldn't buy food with DNA in it.
We all have to analyze the information given to us with a critical eye, else we start getting carried away