LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Hydrochloric Acid: Substance
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On a health hazard spectrum of 0 - 3 Hydrochloric acid registers 1.5. A score of 3 represents a very high hazard to health, 2 represents a medium hazard and 1 is harmful to health. Factors that are taken into account to obtain this ranking include the extent of the material's toxic or poisonous nature and/or its lack of toxicity, and the evaluation of its tendency to cause, or not cause cancer and/or birth defects. It does not take into account exposure to the substance. Human exposure is reflected in the NPI rank given to this substance (see comparative data below). A substance that scores highly as a health hazard is arsenic at 2.3 and one of the lowest scores is ammonia at 1.0.
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Hydrochloric acid has been a basic chemical since the middle ages. The substance was first discovered by an alchemist around the year 800 while mixing common salt with vitriol (sulphuric acid). The invention of gold dissolving aqua regia, consisting of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid, originates from the same time.
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This fact sheet summarizes information on 129 hydrochloric acid releases investigated by the New York State Department of Health for the Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance (HSEES)1 project. The goal of this federal project is to reduce injury and death from accidental chemical releases through improved understanding of the causes. Learning about hydrochloric acid releases and how to prevent them can facilitate better training and improve the future safety of workers, responders and the general public.
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Please Note: The main source of information for this fact sheet is EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which contains information on inhalation chronic toxicity of hydrochloric acid and the Reference Concentration (RfC). Other secondary sources include the Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB), a database of summaries of peer-reviewed literature, and the Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances (RTECS), a database of toxic effects that are not peer reviewed.
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