One knee had second degree and the other third degree. I couldn't figure why he hadn't felt something long before it got so bad. He's out of work for at least 6 weeks now.
OT 3rd degree burns
Jul 10, 2007
50 Replies
Might have felt cool on his skin at first. Some chemical reactions have that effect, and considering the weather he probably enjoyed it...
at first...
Wow, I've had my hands in wet cement while troweling out a small patch, never had any ill effects from it. It would be interesting to find out what was going on there, how long was he in the cement, what kind of cement.
I'm no doctor, but my son has a friend who used to run a concrete pump. Brian had to quit the job due to an extreme reaction he developed to contact with wet concrete. It's possible this guy had some sort of combination reaction of alkaline burning and allergies.
"mark_digital©" .
Can you say eunuch?
Natalie
Harry Reid.
boohoo
Natalie
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ;)
I've worked with cement with my bare hands too. You know, a small batch in a
5 gallon bucket. I found it easier to get at the unmixed stuff at the bottom than to try stirring it out with a shovel. Slightly abrasive on the finger tips and gets under the fingernails but that's all. Some time in the near future I'll see him and I'll do a followup here.
Regular concrete and cement are naturally somewhat alkali, and affect people mildly, unless you're very sensitive then all bets are off. Serious temporary skin irritations are to be expected.
Stucco and Mortar mixes have a lot of quicklime added in to give extra plasticity for sticking to bricks and blocks, and to the underlying scratch coat for Stucco, it makes them even more alkaline.
And then you get the Rapid-Set concrete that they use on highway repairs and other places they need fast set and high early strength, so they can replace a slab overnight and open it to truck traffic in the morning - that stuff has the alkalinity plus lots of other chemicals in the soup to get the rapid set to 'kick off'. I can easily see third-degree chemical burns happening there.
Moral of the story: When the instructions tell you to wear gloves and goggles and other protective clothing, avoid skin or eye contact, and how to wash it off and treat or neutralize it if you do make skin or eye contact - BELIEVE THEM.
Unless he died, or his Schwartz / Johnson / Putz (Twig and Berries for the Brits) fell off as part of the reaction to the concrete, that wouldn't put him in the running for "The Darwin Award" - where to qualify he needs to have permanently removed himself from the gene pool in a particularly creative manner.
The knees are roughly 12" too low for the desired effect. ;-)
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