Chemical burn Chemical burn A chemical burn occurs when living tissue is exposed to a corrosive substance such as a strong acid or base. Chemical burns follow standard burn classification and may cause extensive tissue damage. The main types of irritant and/or corrosive products are: acids, bases, oxidizers / reducing agents, solvents, and alkylants. Additionally, chemical burns can be caused by some types of chemical weapons, e.g., vesicants such as mustard gas and Lewisite, or urticants such as phosgene oxime. Chemical burns may: The exact symptoms of a chemical burn depend on the chemical involved. Symptoms include itching, bleaching or darkening of
Chemical stability state B if the Gibbs energy of the change from A to B is positive. Thermodynamic stability applies to a particular system. The reactivity of a chemical substance is a description of how it might react across a variety of potential chemical systems and, for a given system, how fast such a reaction could proceed. Chemical substances or states can persist indefinitely even though they are not in their lowest energy state if they experience metastability - a state which is stable only if not disturbed too much. A substance (or state) might also be termed "kinetically persistent" if it