Abstracto

Health Hazards of Silicagel

Shiva kumar S,SowjanyaP, Subhashini D

Synthetic chemistry is one of the subdicipline of organic chemistry involving synthesis of chemical compounds. One main element in the synthetic chemistry discipline is purification of the synthesised chemical mixtures. There are many ways to purify the chemical compounds but most preferred one is the chromatographic technique. Chromatography is technique of separating and analysing the components of a mixture of liquids or gases by selective adsorption on to the medium like paper, alumina, silica gel and more. Out of all medium most preferred one is silica gel. Due to its amorphous and porous nature used for achieving a desired separation of certain molecular sizes. Due to silica gel's polarity, non-polar components tend separate mixtures very cleanly. But the question is it good to use silica gel to its maximum extent? Answer is NO. It causes lot of hazards to the human body. Most of the researchers from developing and poor countries use silica gel manually without knowing its Hazardous nature.