HACKER Q&A
📣 speedylight

How worried should I be about prolonged exposure to a toxic gas?


Toxic gas sounds a little ominous, but basically for the past 3 days I’ve had this funny chemical smell in my bedroom that smelled very similar to chlorine. I couldn’t find the source of the odor until yesterday night, which turned out to be coming from a mini fridge made by “chefman” — I don’t know exactly what went wrong but I knew it was the source of the smell.

At first I thought it was a refrigerant leak, but when I opened the back panel I instead found an aluminum heat sink with some electronics — which I later realized was basically a peltier cooler. So there was no refrigerant that could’ve leaked.

When I initially unplugged it, it was cool on the inside, so the fridge was still functional but something in it went wrong and started to emit something that smelled like chlorine to me but to my mom it smelled like burnt plastic.

I’m worried because I’ve been breathing in whatever was being released by this stupid fridge for the better part of the last 3 days and I don’t know if I’m gonna die tomorrow or something — to give some perspective, I was very desensitized to the smell yesterday when compared to other people in my house.

I need some educated guesses from the smart people on here, just tell me I’m gonna be ok but in a analytical/logical sense. I don’t feel any pain or discomfort nor did I really feel any neurological effects, although it’s hard to tell because I’m also stoned in my room all the time.


  👤 VoidWhisperer Accepted Answer ✓
You'd likely be better off asking this to a doctor instead of HN..