is it dangerous to breath in the gas from a fridge?

Question

i burst the pipe in my fridge when cleaning it and the gas spurted out into my face and filled the room too.

Answer 1

Because Freon is non-toxic, it eliminated the danger posed by refrigerator leaks. In just a few years, compressor refrigerators using Freon would become the standard for almost all home kitchens. In 1930, Thomas Midgley held a demonstration of the physical properties of Freon for the American Chemical Society by inhaling a lung-full of the new wonder gas and breathing it out onto a candle flame, which was extinguished, thus showing the gas's non-toxicity and non-flammable properties. Only decades later did people realize that such chlorofluorocarbons endangered the ozone layer of the entire planet. So you endangered the ozone layer slightly.

Answer 2

No the are not dangerous if you breath them in. That is the whole reason that cfcs were used in the first place, in normal conditions they are very stable and unreactive. If you were to breath a lot of cfcs and it displaced all the oxygen from the room then you could suffocate, but that can happen with any gas in large enough quantities (well apart from oxygen). It is the stability of cfcs which helps make them bad for ozone. Carbon chlorine bonds are usually very reactive and do not last long enough to make it high in the atmosphere where they can cause damage. However a CFC is stable enough that it can make it high up in the atmosphere where it then breaks up and causes damage via free radical processes. Just on a side note I heard the other day (on the TV quiz QI I think) that the bloke who invented cfcs was the same guy who thought of putting lead in petrol. After he came up with the idea of leaded petrol it was found out that it killed people and he understandably felt pretty bad about it. To make up for it he discovered CFC’s which at the time were thought to be great. Of course we now know they’re not so great .

Answer 3

I researched this when a tenant had a small leak. According to what I have read it is like breathing in Carbon monoxide in that there are no known long term exposer problems like cancer, or what ever. The bigest issue is to get to fresh air and air the place out, just as if it were carbon monoxide. You should be fine.

Answer 4

yes it is heavier than air and can fill your lungs and u will drown

Answer 5

yes, just like carbon monoxide

Answer 6

yup you could get lung cancer