Dry Ice: Safety Reminders For Home Use

Dry ice is pretty amazing stuff – you can use it for everything from making eerie Halloween displays and preserving perishable food for holiday mailings to removing old floor tiles and fixing car dents (more on these uses in future blogs!).

But dry ice (which is carbon dioxide in solid form) also requires some special handling to do all of these tasks – mostly because its surface temperature is a chilly minus 109.3 degrees Fahrenheit! With temperatures that low, handling dry ice improperly could cause severe burns and other problems, so please be careful!

Always follow these safety tips when using or handling dry ice:

• Dry ice is not a toy – teach children to use it correctly. Only allow younger children to use it with adult supervision.
• Dry ice must be handled using heavy gloves or tongs. It will cause severe burns if it comes in contact with bare or unprotected skin.
• Always wear safety goggles when handling dry ice. The debris and shards are extremely dangerous to your eyes. When tapping dry ice with a hammer, first cover it with a towel to keep the pieces in one place.
• Never put dry ice in your mouth.
• Never store dry ice in an airtight container. As the dry ice sublimates (turns from a solid to a gas…it can never turn into a liquid), gas pressure will build and the container will explode.
• Do not store dry ice in your freezer. It will cause your freezer to become too cold and the freezer may shut off.
• In the unlikely event of a dry ice burn, treat it the same as you would a heat burn. See a doctor if the skin blisters or comes off.

Need dry ice for your Halloween display, or to ship food for the upcoming holidays? Stop in and stock up at our convenient store locations:

IRISH CARBONIC
1444 Clinton Street | Buffalo, NY 14206
(716) 827-2727 | Map & Directions »

IRISH CARBONIC AND PROPANE
535 Buffalo Road | Rochester, NY 14611
(585) 254-6844 | Map & Directions »

IRISH CARBONIC
772 Marion Rd | Columbus, OH 43207
(800) 884-0072 | Map & Directions »