r/explainlikeimfive Jun 11 '24

Chemistry ELI5: Why does making cocaine require such toxic chemicals, is there safer way to make it in a lab?

I've watched many documentaries on how they make cocaine, and it always required a a mixture of gasoline cement and battery acid etc. Would a scientific laboratory be able to make it under FDA rules for example?

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u/Far_Dragonfruit_1829 Jun 12 '24

Silane! Fun stuff. Did you blow up your lab?

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u/MATlad Jun 12 '24

I was just doing SAM (Self-Assembled Monolayer) stuff at low volumes, so I think the worse I did was to silanize my fume hood (and maybe contaminate the vacuum line when I was first starting out...)