Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith
ilmarinen - MODERATOR
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I don't want to derail another existing thread, so I decided to post a new one. Post your thoughts, advice, and questions here.
Shop safety and good health care should be that you wear a respirator in any dust producing process, and that you vacuum up any dust residue that collects in the shop. If you don't breathe it it can't hurt you! It's that simple.
Comments like the below ones are common in the threads in Shop Talk:
"XYZ is highly toxic"
"G-10 is toxic"
"Grinding MOP will kill you because the dust is toxic"
"The fumes from galvanized pipe are toxic".
, etc.
While these things may cause various health problems from mild to deadly, they are not toxic.
Toxic means poisonous. If it damages living tissue because it has a chemical or poisonus effect on them, it is toxic. If it damages them because of a physical effect, it is harmful.
An example is G-10, which is glass fibers in an epoxy base. The glass gets sheared into minute pieces when the material is ground or sanded. There is also epoxy dust. The cured epoxy dust is virtually inert. It isn't good to breathe because it is dust, not poisonous. The glass fibers are the real danger. They can permanently damage your lungs, and may even cause cancer (due to irritation) when the particles get stuck in the linings of the lungs and bronchia. The damage is because they cause harm. not because they cause any chemical damage. This is why G-10 is harmful, not toxic. It is often compared to asbestos, but a look under a microscope will show a vast difference. The asbestos is friable has fuzz and barbs all over it. The glass is a mono-fiber that shears into smaller pieces, but they are still mono-fibers. Both are bad to breath into your lungs, but the results are very different.
Breathing any particulate dust is bad. If the dust isn't soluble in water or absorbable by your lung tissue, it will collect in the lungs. This reduces your ability to absorb oxygen. COPD, emphysema, , and some other lung diseases are the eventual result of repeated exposure. This is because the dust is harmful, not toxic.
Some common false impressions ... even by doctors ... are:
1) MOP is fatal/toxic to breathe because it has cyanide in it.
2) Super glue vapors or skin contact is toxic because they contain cyanide.
3) The smoke or vapors from heating galvanized pipe are toxic/fatal to breathe.
4) Poinsettia leaves are deadly poisonous.
Lets look at them one at a time:
1) Mother of pear is a piece of a shell. While it may smell funky when ground or sawn, it is just calcium carbonate. There is no cyanide or toxin. Breathing too much of the dust can make you feel ill and nauseous because you have absorbed too much and changed your blood Ph, ... as well as breathed a lot of dust which makes you oxygen deprived. Both these factors can make you cyanotic - blue lips and fingernails - which is a symptom of low blood oxygen ... not a diagnosis of cyanide poisoning ( which also turns you blue. The term cyanotic and cyanosis refers to the blue color ( cyan) not the toxin cyanide.
2) Super glue is a cyano-acrylic resin. It does not have cyanide in it, but is a carbon and a nitrogen atom bonded with a negative 1 valance. The catalyst is water molecules. When catalyzed, cyanoacrylic turns into a polymer acrylic chain.
The glue isn't good to get on you because it sticks to skin very well. The acrylics are not particularly harmful in the normal sense. The smell of CA glue is from the carrier/solvent. It isn't good to breathe because it is a powerful irritant, but not highly toxic.
3) Galvanized pipe/sheet, etc. is steel that has been coated with zinc to retard corrosion and rust. Zinc is very active chemically .... iron not as much. Zinc bonds tightly to the iron in the steel and steals all the oxygen that comes near it. The zinc oxide acts as a protective coating preventing any oxygen from reaching the iron and causing rust. This layer of zinc oxide is very thin, and usually invisible beyond a dull gray look. under it is lots more free zinc ready for any oxygen that comes along due to wear or aging of the outer film.When heated high enough, the free zing vaporizes and rapidly combines with the oxygen in the air. This causes the hot air and vapors to precipitate powdered zinc oxide. It is basically snowing zinc oxide. Zinc oxide is very stable and virtually in-absorbable. If you breathe it, it will not cause any harm besides what breathing a fine powder does ( as in the MOP dust). It will make you feel dizzy, weak, and nauseous ... not because it is toxic, but because it is limiting how much oxygen you are absorbing. Drinking a glass of milk will help settle your stomach ( it washes and carries any of the oral and esophageal dust down to your stomach where the digestive acids do away with them), going out into fresh air, and getting a good nights rest will cure the problem. This is called Metal Fume Fever. It is a problem of welders and people making fumes from melting metals. It is not fatal, but unpleasant. Avoiding breathing the dust/powder in the first place is how to avid getting it. A respirator will eliminate the risk.
The death a while back of Jim "Paw-Paw" Wilson is constantly used to validity the story that these fumes are toxic.
Jim was running a good size forge in a tightly closed shop, burning the galvanizing off some pipe ( and/or the plating off some brass items) with no ventilation or respirator while having a bad case of the flu. His lungs started weeping because of the exposure to the smoke and irritants as well as the low oxygen level in the shop - and he basically drown in his own fluids in less than 24 hours. The cause of his death was very bad judgement ( bordering on stupidity), not toxic fumes from zinc.
Zinc poisoning is a different thing. You can't get it from breathing or absorbing zinc oxide. It isn't common in humans, but affects some birds and small animals. It comes from ingesting certain zinc chemicals .... but not zinc oxide.
4) The poinsettia story is here to point out how a wives tale can become so ubiquitous that everyone knows it .... even when it is totally false. (When I was a kid, another one of these well accepted stories was about Spanish Fly, but we will leave that for google searching). If you walk into an ER tomorrow and say that your child has eaten a poinsettia leaf, they likely will go into code pink mode. As soon as someone calls the poison hotline or looks up the protocol for treatment/antidote, they will get the surprise of their career - it isn't poisonous! Poinsettia leaves are pretty much non-toxic. You could make a salad from them with no risk of dying, but you might get a rip-roaring case of diarrhea.
Other common stories are that lots of people die from Black Widow bites and rattlesnake bites. These stories are called FOAF stories ( friend of a friend) due to the frequent claims like "I knew a kid/man/person whose brother's son died form it..." Black widow bite deaths are so rare that some years have not even one in the entire US populating. Rattlesnakes cause about 3-5 deaths per year in the US. Horses kill five times as many more people than rattlesnakes, and deer kill hundreds of people a year
One real danger that few understand is beryllium. It is toxic and can kill you or make you very sick. Do not melt unknown copper alloys ... and never use beryllium alloys for any knife work. The dust is the worst, but even skin contact with the bare metal when grinding it can be very bad.
Shop safety and good health care should be that you wear a respirator in any dust producing process, and that you vacuum up any dust residue that collects in the shop. If you don't breathe it it can't hurt you! It's that simple.
Comments like the below ones are common in the threads in Shop Talk:
"XYZ is highly toxic"
"G-10 is toxic"
"Grinding MOP will kill you because the dust is toxic"
"The fumes from galvanized pipe are toxic".
, etc.
While these things may cause various health problems from mild to deadly, they are not toxic.
Toxic means poisonous. If it damages living tissue because it has a chemical or poisonus effect on them, it is toxic. If it damages them because of a physical effect, it is harmful.
An example is G-10, which is glass fibers in an epoxy base. The glass gets sheared into minute pieces when the material is ground or sanded. There is also epoxy dust. The cured epoxy dust is virtually inert. It isn't good to breathe because it is dust, not poisonous. The glass fibers are the real danger. They can permanently damage your lungs, and may even cause cancer (due to irritation) when the particles get stuck in the linings of the lungs and bronchia. The damage is because they cause harm. not because they cause any chemical damage. This is why G-10 is harmful, not toxic. It is often compared to asbestos, but a look under a microscope will show a vast difference. The asbestos is friable has fuzz and barbs all over it. The glass is a mono-fiber that shears into smaller pieces, but they are still mono-fibers. Both are bad to breath into your lungs, but the results are very different.
Breathing any particulate dust is bad. If the dust isn't soluble in water or absorbable by your lung tissue, it will collect in the lungs. This reduces your ability to absorb oxygen. COPD, emphysema, , and some other lung diseases are the eventual result of repeated exposure. This is because the dust is harmful, not toxic.
Some common false impressions ... even by doctors ... are:
1) MOP is fatal/toxic to breathe because it has cyanide in it.
2) Super glue vapors or skin contact is toxic because they contain cyanide.
3) The smoke or vapors from heating galvanized pipe are toxic/fatal to breathe.
4) Poinsettia leaves are deadly poisonous.
Lets look at them one at a time:
1) Mother of pear is a piece of a shell. While it may smell funky when ground or sawn, it is just calcium carbonate. There is no cyanide or toxin. Breathing too much of the dust can make you feel ill and nauseous because you have absorbed too much and changed your blood Ph, ... as well as breathed a lot of dust which makes you oxygen deprived. Both these factors can make you cyanotic - blue lips and fingernails - which is a symptom of low blood oxygen ... not a diagnosis of cyanide poisoning ( which also turns you blue. The term cyanotic and cyanosis refers to the blue color ( cyan) not the toxin cyanide.
2) Super glue is a cyano-acrylic resin. It does not have cyanide in it, but is a carbon and a nitrogen atom bonded with a negative 1 valance. The catalyst is water molecules. When catalyzed, cyanoacrylic turns into a polymer acrylic chain.
The glue isn't good to get on you because it sticks to skin very well. The acrylics are not particularly harmful in the normal sense. The smell of CA glue is from the carrier/solvent. It isn't good to breathe because it is a powerful irritant, but not highly toxic.
3) Galvanized pipe/sheet, etc. is steel that has been coated with zinc to retard corrosion and rust. Zinc is very active chemically .... iron not as much. Zinc bonds tightly to the iron in the steel and steals all the oxygen that comes near it. The zinc oxide acts as a protective coating preventing any oxygen from reaching the iron and causing rust. This layer of zinc oxide is very thin, and usually invisible beyond a dull gray look. under it is lots more free zinc ready for any oxygen that comes along due to wear or aging of the outer film.When heated high enough, the free zing vaporizes and rapidly combines with the oxygen in the air. This causes the hot air and vapors to precipitate powdered zinc oxide. It is basically snowing zinc oxide. Zinc oxide is very stable and virtually in-absorbable. If you breathe it, it will not cause any harm besides what breathing a fine powder does ( as in the MOP dust). It will make you feel dizzy, weak, and nauseous ... not because it is toxic, but because it is limiting how much oxygen you are absorbing. Drinking a glass of milk will help settle your stomach ( it washes and carries any of the oral and esophageal dust down to your stomach where the digestive acids do away with them), going out into fresh air, and getting a good nights rest will cure the problem. This is called Metal Fume Fever. It is a problem of welders and people making fumes from melting metals. It is not fatal, but unpleasant. Avoiding breathing the dust/powder in the first place is how to avid getting it. A respirator will eliminate the risk.
The death a while back of Jim "Paw-Paw" Wilson is constantly used to validity the story that these fumes are toxic.
Jim was running a good size forge in a tightly closed shop, burning the galvanizing off some pipe ( and/or the plating off some brass items) with no ventilation or respirator while having a bad case of the flu. His lungs started weeping because of the exposure to the smoke and irritants as well as the low oxygen level in the shop - and he basically drown in his own fluids in less than 24 hours. The cause of his death was very bad judgement ( bordering on stupidity), not toxic fumes from zinc.
Zinc poisoning is a different thing. You can't get it from breathing or absorbing zinc oxide. It isn't common in humans, but affects some birds and small animals. It comes from ingesting certain zinc chemicals .... but not zinc oxide.
4) The poinsettia story is here to point out how a wives tale can become so ubiquitous that everyone knows it .... even when it is totally false. (When I was a kid, another one of these well accepted stories was about Spanish Fly, but we will leave that for google searching). If you walk into an ER tomorrow and say that your child has eaten a poinsettia leaf, they likely will go into code pink mode. As soon as someone calls the poison hotline or looks up the protocol for treatment/antidote, they will get the surprise of their career - it isn't poisonous! Poinsettia leaves are pretty much non-toxic. You could make a salad from them with no risk of dying, but you might get a rip-roaring case of diarrhea.
Other common stories are that lots of people die from Black Widow bites and rattlesnake bites. These stories are called FOAF stories ( friend of a friend) due to the frequent claims like "I knew a kid/man/person whose brother's son died form it..." Black widow bite deaths are so rare that some years have not even one in the entire US populating. Rattlesnakes cause about 3-5 deaths per year in the US. Horses kill five times as many more people than rattlesnakes, and deer kill hundreds of people a year
One real danger that few understand is beryllium. It is toxic and can kill you or make you very sick. Do not melt unknown copper alloys ... and never use beryllium alloys for any knife work. The dust is the worst, but even skin contact with the bare metal when grinding it can be very bad.
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