You probably mean sodium for the first, or vinegar for the second. Although neither are harmful the way carbon tet is.
As far as letting noobs play with dangerous stuff for training (or maybe Darwinian selection?) thinking back to my undergrad years the worst stuff we messed with for training purposes was various ionization states of chromium, lead, and mercury. We did at least have multiple marked hazmat buckets, didn't just flush down the drain. That was a long time ago and that kind of stuff might not be acceptable labwork in 2013.
If you ever get to work with aqueous chromium some of the ionization states are beautiful. Incredibly toxic, sure, but you can see why people wanted to use them in paints.
You probably mean sodium for the first, or vinegar for the second. Although neither are harmful the way carbon tet is.
As far as letting noobs play with dangerous stuff for training (or maybe Darwinian selection?) thinking back to my undergrad years the worst stuff we messed with for training purposes was various ionization states of chromium, lead, and mercury. We did at least have multiple marked hazmat buckets, didn't just flush down the drain. That was a long time ago and that kind of stuff might not be acceptable labwork in 2013.
If you ever get to work with aqueous chromium some of the ionization states are beautiful. Incredibly toxic, sure, but you can see why people wanted to use them in paints.