No idea if this is genuine or not, but makes you think......similar to the recent 2K paint thread, there are many silent
killers lurking in the average workshop......building stuff can be a dangerous business !


Al

http://www.brewracingframes.com/id75.htm

I saw that a few years ago alan, i wonder how his health has been since then? Seems awful to f*** yourself so royally with such a little mishap.

IIRC the stuff that caused this are banned from UK products

Some of the early brake cleaners used Tricoethelyn? (not sure of the spelling)which was used IIRC for DRY cleaning and I think that was the stuff that caused mustard gas.

This is likely to be a true story.

A few years ago I worked in a tubing factory, making tubing for various aerospace applications etc.

The drawing process requires frequent annealing to counter the work hardening effect and degreasing

to remove lubricants used during the drawing process.

Trike or tricloroethylene was used as the degreasant and around the area were very prominent no smoking signs

(this was before the smoking ban).

I enquired as to why , and the answer given was much the same as the link states i.e Phosgene gas!!

Steve.

p.s did I not see somewere that it was used in early type fire extuingishers? This would seem madness to me?

Whilst he might be lucky not have died on the spot - If the poor dude got COPD then I feel for him. I work with patients who have it and carers whos' partners have died from it. It's a grim, long term, horrible way to go.

Yup, watched my poor old gran struggle with it for years till it eventually killed her......not nice, and in her case totally avoidable as it was caused by smoking, although she would never admit that was the cause......carried on puffing away to the very end, and she was on oxygen for the last two years !.... its a wonder the house never went up


Originally posted by Dangle_kt
Whilst he might be lucky not have died on the spot - If the poor dude got COPD then I feel for him. I work with patients who have it and carers whos' partners have died from it. It's a grim, long term, horrible way to go.

Tetrachloroethylene isn't very pleasant, but then neither are a lot of solvents, halogenated or not. Pretty horrifying to me (as an ex-Chemist now on the employment scrapheap) to watch people spray solvents over their hands, carefully washing all the skin-borne crud into their biological systems. The kind of 'accident' in the link looks pretty plausible.

MEL's and OEL's, REACH, SDS and all the other acronyms are things you might like to explore.

I believe (and hell, what do I know) that it'll be the long term exposures that get us all. I'll be dead long before any of you, simply because of working with methylating agents, alkyating agents of many specii, carcinogens of all sorts... but it'll be the petrol that'll yield cancers and various troubles. Benzenes, alkylbenzenes, the persistent MTBE's. Their combustion products aren't too good either.

There you go, simply live amongst the Undead, wobbling their lard around Tescos. Just a warning though, I believe a lot of people die in bed.

my grandpa-in-law nominally died of COPD, never knew he had it. Occationally breathless but just keeled over one day. Sad nevertheless, as he was a legend of a man who i never really got to know. Over the years ive realised he was just like me.

He was in hospital in his youth with tuberculosis, and was smoking on the ward

[Edited on 19/8/11 by JoelP]