DCHAS members may be interested in this editorial published yesteday inthe Journal of Organic Chemistry.

- Ralph

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.joc.2c01402#

How Dangerous Is Too Dangerous? A Perspective on Azide Chemistry
• Daniel S. Treitler* and
• Simon Leung

Cite this: J. Org. Chem. 2022, 87, 17, 11293–11295
Publication Date:September 2, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.joc.2c01402

All chemists should be aware of the risks inherent to their work and should consider how to adequately protect themselves and their colleagues from such hazards. This begs the question: Can a reaction be so dangerous that, in a general purpose laboratory, even in the presence of such precautions, the residual risk is still too high? We contend that yes, certain reactions fall into this category: those that employ stoichiometric quantities of hydrazoic acid, those that form transition metal azides, and those that combine inorganic azide with dichloromethane.

A recent article in this journal authored by Gazvoda et al. describes a procedure for preparing triazoles from alkynes using stoichiometric sodium azide, stoichiometric acid, and catalytic copper, followed by a workup that may include dichloromethane. (1,2) As industrial chemists with decades of experience safely scaling up azide chemistry, we feel compelled to share with the research community our three major safety concerns with this procedure.

(see link above for details of their concerns)

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