Heh that reminds me of the solder bath I use for medium-temperature work, something above the pay grade of a hotplate, but not requiring the likes of an oxyhydrogen flame or arc torch, Had been working for a while, keeping a vessel constructed for the purpose, along with an inert gas flow and pair of carbon rods, dipped in a eutectic mixture of KOH and NaOH, which helps to recover the alkali metals if using electrowinning type means, as NaOH forms a solid blue-grey material, with a texture britle like molten and resolidified caustic, but reactive, like an alkali metal, although less reactive than the metals themselves undiluted, KOH probably does too, and there is only a window of about 20 'C where you can actually recover the sodium metal from the dross, where it won't just melt back in to form a corrosive slag, so using the eutectic allows the melting point of the combined salts to drop lower than either of the hydroxides alone, although with the 'small print' that an alloy of sodium and potassium, known as NaK, is liquid, flows like mercury, blows up with more aggression than potassium, stuff has a hair trigger.
Had been working anyhow, for a whole, until I started to notice this nasty pervasive heavy fog in the air, turned out it was the lead, leaching out and vaporising, didn't have a taste as such, but you feel it shrivelling away at your teeth. Nasty.
Heh, just what I was thinking of, selenium rectifiers. As for ammonia, it is corrosive if there is enough of it, but other than anhydrous ammonia, not what I'd call potentially threatening. Don't drink it is about as worrying as it gets. Its the heavier analogs, phosphine and arsine mostly, stibine and bismithine being rather unstable, althouth stibine at least is enough so to be toxic) Ammonia you know what its going to do, phosphine is just unpleasant, it stinks, its highly poisonous and usually accompanied when formed by some P2H4, diphosphine, which behaves much like diborane, pyrophoric, very toxic, smells like utter shite. (never smelled diborane myself, don't want to either, but have experienced pentaborane, and it smells more than bad enough to make the toxicity of diborane pottentially be one of its BETTER characteristics, pentaborane fucking reeks, like rotting stagnant dairy produce.
As for the higher analogs of the chalcogen compounds, toxicity goes up exponentially as one goes down the chalcogens, as do the stenches, H2S is of high toxicity, and smells like bad eggs. The smell of H2Se is absolutely VILE, and its of higher acute lethality than hydrogen cyanide. H2S is dangerous IMO mostly for its sneakyness, the way it acts to prevent its own perception, and that it can knock someone dead with one breath of the H2S-contaminated air in say, a sewer drain, its gotten people in chains as they've gone down, and finished off the rescuers on occasion too, even when they knew it was there.
And the SMELL goes from none, with oxygen (alcohols etc.) to pretty bad with the likes of alkyl sulfides, alkyl mercaptans (one can smell for example, one part per trillion of dimethyl trisulfide in air, smells like rotting flesh and shit), and for a taste of what the family are like, you ever been out in the woods, and suddenly been punched in the nose by the stench of something putrid and rotten? its probably a stink-horn, one of a group of gasteroid fungi known as the phalloids, for their frequent resemblence to...well lets just put it this way, they look as unspeakable as they smell. One can smell the stinkhorns long before one ever SEES the fungus or fungi themselves growing, but if one does, then its likely to be heaving with blowflies, come to feast on the rancid, food-poisoning-dirrhea looking slime that dribbles from the thin sliver of tissue which serves somewhat as a cap.
Looks and smells just like what you'd expect from a dick thats just fucked a dead dog up the arse. Gives off a fragrant aroma of methanethiol, dimethyl disulfide, dimethyl trisulfide and a bunch of other sulfurous stinkers. Its just as well they didn't opt to base their blow-fly come-hither signals upon selenium, stinkhorns you can get used to, but the selenium equivalent would be an abomination of the worst kind. As for tellurium, probably too sparsely dispersed in earths soil for an organism to be widespread and successful, but the equivalent tellurides, I've heard of people who've come into contact with Te killing themselves becauseof the stench that followed them for ages after, even contamimating the pages of books they'd read so one would straight away know who had been reading what, by the stench

And remember that tale told by Sasha Shulgin about that train carriage, guy drops a vial of dibutyl telluride, it breaks (of course

) and scratch one train, permanently unfit for human habitation. Scrap metal from then on. For real stench based fun though IMO few things beat pyridine. A drop of pyridine base on the heaters of something like a metrolink carriage, and you'll have everybody running for cover clutching their stomachs. (OK, I admit it, I could be a real little shyte as a kid, all kinds of creative uses for things like pyridine, skatole, cadaverine, mercaptans)
Great way to get rid of the likes of a pack of obnoxious chanting drunk football fans though. Perfect for when you decide you just aren't willing to share the same air as them a moment longer. and that they are the ones who are vacating. the premises. Something one is used to or grown to be able to tolerate, whilst being utterly foul when it first presents itself for examination, works a treat
As for crack, not one for it myself either. I don't see the point. Too high cost too little return,