Ted Bennett wrote:


Would it be a bad idea to store unused motor oil in a plastic container
that has been used for liquid detergent if it has been cleaned and
rinsed? I am more concerned about bad effects on the oil than the
container, via leaching of something into the oil.

I like the container because of its neatly enclosed drip-free pouring
spout, but I can still smell the detergent after several rinsings.

Have you ever heard the term "mouse milk"? (1)

Since you know the name of the product, you can look up the Material
Safety Data Sheet and find out what the reactivity and flammability and
pH of the product is, as well as what kinds of dyes and odorants the
manufacturer has used to make the stuff look and smell attractive.

And the lingering trace amounts of the actual product might be measured
in a few parts per million, but if you just need to know, in order to
calm your righteous paranoia, by all means, GO to the MSDS. Bless you!

You're a Good Person and People Like You and you have a Right To Know,
by golly! Don't let anybody tell you different!

Might as well look up the carcenogenicity of the plastic used in the
container, too, as you might wind up with cancer of the crankshaft, and
gawd knows, nobody wants their crankshaft to fall off before they're
too senile to remember what it was orignally intended for!

You can fill up one of them intiguing plastic containers with your
favorite motor oil and cut the top off so you have room to drop a test
hamster in there and you can watch him swimming around in the golden
liquid and if the hamster doesn't turn pea green and start puking after
a day or two, well, you know that the plastic container and whatever it
had in it won't hurt your motorsickle.

That's the way them MSDS boys test hazardous substances. They drown a
lab rat in 5000 times the lethal dose, say it killed the test specimen
and declare the material to be diabolically hazardous!

(1) Engineers talk about "mouse milk" when they consider the
vanishingly small advantages or disadvantage caused by very small
quantities of anything. They call it "mouse milk" because you have to
milk about 100 mice to get a few drops of it...

I'd bet you would have to "milk" 500 empty soap bottle to get a single
drop of the odorant that excites desperate housewives to fondle
themselves intimately as they watch "Days of Our Lives"...