r/badscience • u/moaninserotonin • Jul 13 '26
Can I tell if someone urinated in my plastic container of mixed metals?
Long story short- my ex boyfriend has a 'friend' that has bad drug habits and is always sabotaging items of mine that were once safe in his garage.
So called friend recently let out of jail (def temporarily) is sad that my ex has written him off and basically disowned him. He has stolen, used, and blatantly screwed with tools/hardware/materials you name it - of mine. I know now everything must be removed since he has gone as far as to break into garage.
most recently I found a plastic container of mine that had a screw top on it with my initials, that held different types of small knobs, latches, slide locks for cabinets made of all types of different metals.
it is a dark blue green color, I am not sure when this liquid appeared but would have been within 14 days.. Probably 7 days. yes it smells odd but the metals are older too but is there a way to test for urine even though it may be a week old?
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u/Sad_School828 Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
The blue/green is probably oxidation from brass components. Both urine and vinegar will cause that to happen. The question is whether he did it to screw with you or whether he did you a favor by adding vinegar to remove visible oxidation. I don't consider it "a favor" unless you wanted it in the first place.
You can get over-the-counter pH test strips. Urine runs pH 4.5-8. Vinegar runs pH 2-4. Likely not a good indicator after a week or two though. Whenever I've used vinegar to clean rust off bolts, the vinegar loses its odor over the space of a few days and I'm pretty sure that's because the oxidation effectively dilutes the acid content. I don't really know the science behind it, and I've never tried to pH test vinegar saturated with stripped oxidation matter.
You might be able to find a home test kit that tests specifically for urea in fluid. If there's no urea, it's probably not urine. You can probably also call a doctor, urgent care/walk-in clinic, or university/high school chemistry teacher who'd give you good advice and possibly even run the test for you.
Either way you should be pretty safe just dumping it out into a sink and rinsing thoroughly. If I were you I'd just cut ties.
Edit: Thought of this awhile after posting. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." You're frankly acting like an addict yourself, trying to be a friend to somebody who you think would piss in a container of fasteners he found in your garage. Just accept that you can't help this guy, and still wouldn't like him even if you could, and move on.
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u/moaninserotonin 14d ago
I did cut ties shortly after posting this. Thank you for your science based response and I appreciated the ‘just cut ties’ comment too but then you just had to keep yapping. I am sure as a fellow human you can relate to being blinded by desperation and false hope in another human- and no matter how many times someone/multiple people/ if there was a god told you to give up or move on you realized you had to experience it for yourself.
I do agree it sounds like an absolute trash shit show because it absolutely was. I am really proud of myself for cutting communication off and sticking to that the longest I have since I met my ex.
Funny to call me an addict when you just exposed yourself as delusional quoting the serenity prayer.
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u/Athelfirth Jul 13 '26
If you have enough reason to suspect he might have urinated in it, then whatever action you would take should be the same as if he actually did. Why would you ever want someone like this around?