Formaldehyde is a colorless gas with a special pungent smell, which will irritate people's eyes and nose. Mainly used in chemical industry, wood industry, textile industry, antiseptic solution (such as formalin) and so on. Some unscrupulous merchants add formaldehyde, some for antiseptic function and some for bleaching function. For example, adding formaldehyde to water-soaked food can solidify protein for antiseptic, improve appearance and taste, and adding formaldehyde to alcoholic beverages can prevent turbidity and increase transparency, which will cause serious pollution to food and harm human health.
The main harm of formaldehyde is irritation to skin and mucosa. When indoor formaldehyde reaches a certain concentration, people will feel uncomfortable. More than 0.08m? The concentration of formaldehyde can cause envy, itchy eyes, sore throat, hoarseness, sneezing, chest tightness, asthma, dermatitis and so on. After reaching a certain amount, it is easy to be teratogenic, carcinogenic and mutagenic, so it is very harmful and must not be used in food processing and production.
Symptoms of formaldehyde poisoning:
Mild poisoning: eyes and upper respiratory mucosa have obvious irritation symptoms. The main manifestations are conjunctival congestion, redness, dyspnea, heavy breathing, hoarse throat, dry or dull speech or wet greasy. Poisoned people can still feel their breathing getting thicker. Another specific symptom of mild formaldehyde poisoning is one to two degrees of throat edema.
Moderate poisoning: persistent cough, expectoration, chest tightness, dyspnea and dry and wet gongs. During chest X-ray, the lung texture becomes substantial, becoming scattered spots or flaky shadows, which is medical machine-made bronchopneumonia. The edema of throat is aggravated to grade three. Blood gas analysis will be accompanied by mild and moderate hypoxemia.
Severe poisoning: the lung and larynx deteriorated, pulmonary edema and fourth degree laryngeal edema appeared, and the blood gas analysis was also serious, which was severe hypoxemia.
Formaldehyde detection method: Spectrophotometry is the most common method to detect formaldehyde. Including acetylacetone method; Reagent method; AHMT method, in addition to some other methods that are not commonly used.