Should sale of dangerous acids be stopped?

Kaustubh Katdare

Acid attacks have grown in number in the recent past and finally the supreme court of India has asked the government to decide on their policy on the sale of acid. Do you think sale of acid should be highly regulated and sale of acid to individuals should be banned?

Should only laboratories and industries that need acid for production processes or research be given access to the acids that are dangerous in nature?

I think regulating the sales could be a good idea. The retailers should be asked to collect a digital copy or a photocopy of some ID and address of the individual to whom the sale is being made. The labs and industries should include their registration number or licence number with the order being placed. May be that can help a bit.

Better ideas from other CEans are welcome, as always!

Previously one could buy ingredients for making fireworks from most grocery shops (in Andhra and Tamilnadu). I could not get some potassium chlorate for some experiment in electrochemistry because it is also useful to make IEDs.

Acids are sold in many guises. I will carry the marks of my brush with boiling sulphuric acid at Andhra 'Varsity in '57 to my cremation. Still, somehow a ban on sales of acid does not gel.
Sodium hydroxide can do lot of damage to skin too. I have a scar from that too. The British biologist Prof JBS Haldane gave a talk on 'How to be your own Guinea Pig' at my college. I tried a crystal of sodium hydroxide on the back of my hand. By the time the pain hit me and I washed it off it had scarred me. Took long to heal.

What I am getting at is that with a bit of know how many common things can be used cause hurt. It may not be possible to ban sale of such Apparently innoccuous thins like Harpic contain acids in their formulations (May not be concentrated).

Unfortunately bad people, twisted minds and fanatics cannot be banned.