Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-90.244.94.220-20141004224535/@comment-4621372-20141008221758

Chlorine isn't acid.

Actually, pure chlorine is slightly basic.

There are multiple standards for what constitutes a base and an acid, but the most popular states that an acid is something that releases H+ ions (that is, protons), and a base is something that accepts them.

So basically, an acid AFTER the acid-base reaction becomes a base, and vice versa. As a rule of thumb, the stronger the acid/base, the weaker the opposite.

HCL + NaOH= H20 + Cl+ + Na- = H20 + NaCl.

That's one of the most simple acid-base reactions, and as you can see, HCl, one of the strongest acids, produces Cl+ following the acid-base reaction.

This Chemistry crash brought to you by Guns.

(The reason chlorine is so horrific is two-fold; firsly, when it reacts with the moisture in your body, it forms HCl, which as i said is the strongest acid, and second, the remainder of that reaction is free oxygen, which is one of the deadliest things known to man.)

So actually the big killer in this would be the Free Oxygen, but the Chlorine would kill some stuff too.

By my comment about Nitrogen, BTW, i meant LACK of nitrogen, not excess of it. But it wouldn't actually be that bad.