General > General Technical Chat
Health issues due to soldering fumes.
paul8f:
--- Quote from: jogri on July 02, 2020, 07:05:13 pm ---Primarily automotive but also telecommunications (partly)
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Automotive... I'm guessing due to the wide temperature swings and vibrations?
Telecommunications... something to do with reliability too?
Zero999:
--- Quote from: paul8f on July 02, 2020, 07:38:25 pm ---
--- Quote from: jogri on July 02, 2020, 07:05:13 pm ---Primarily automotive but also telecommunications (partly)
--- End quote ---
Automotive... I'm guessing due to the wide temperature swings and vibrations?
Telecommunications... something to do with reliability too?
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Added aerospace to the list, or at least I believe, but I don't work in a place which manufactures electronics, so we don't have a to comply with RoHS.
MrMobodies:
--- Quote from: EEEnthusiast on April 01, 2020, 01:45:32 pm ---6. Try green tea : Having green tea has really boosted my eyesight. Now I am without glasses for over 2 years. I am not 100% sure if it is only the green tea which has contributed to it, but from my personal experience, it has helped a lot. It is a powerful anti oxidant and stress reliever. It can help cure your eye muscle fatigue when taken over long duration. It may take months before you see a difference. Just 2 cups a day for 1 month should be enough to notice some result.
7. Cut down sugar and switch to honey for your tea.
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I am hearing all good things about green tea. Got to give a try.
A couple of days ago I starting seeing strange things in my vision and it happens when I don't do much work eat sugary things or bread and I end up going to sleep for a while so now I am trying to be careful.
Wallace Gasiewicz:
I worked in health and safety. One of the things we had to monitor was lead.
Lead almost always gets into the body through the mouth.
Things like zinc can be very harmful as "fumes, lead can be also. This happens when someone welds or cuts with a torch.
This is called "metal fume fever" and is quite striking and can make you very sick for a short time. Again this is with usually cutting or welding. Solder temperatures are not that high.
Lead poisoning happens almost always through the mouth. Grinding used to be a common cause of lead poisoning in auto body production when lead was used to cover seams in auto bodies. The lead was applied in semi solid form at controlled temperatures with such implements as putty knives and then ground down with powered grinders. Talk about a good (bad?) way to get particles airborne and into your face!!! This has been eliminated in production as far as I know. This method of auto body repair also resulted in the term "lead sled" i.e. a custom auto body. Almost impossible to find anyone who is skilled enough to do this.
Another place where lead exposure can be high is in lead battery recycling where old batteries are crushed and lead separated by physical methods before being re smelted. Also lead smelting and refining.
We had one goofy guy who had high lead levels. Turns out he had a habit of keeping bullets in his pocket (I do not know why), bullet to hand to mouth. I just bring this up to emphasize the oral rout. This would also go to old toy lead soldiers and old toys painted in lead paint.
Lead levels decreased in workers when proper industrial hygiene was implemented. The most effective procedures for safety included bans on eating, drinking and smoking when there was lead dust involved. Also there were facilities available for showering and for containment of work clothing so lead would not follow workers home.
Slag from the top of molten lead pots is dangerous also. It can become airborne as dust much more easily than molten lead. This is dust,not "fumes", but a bad source of lead exposure.
Childhood lead poising is mostly from eating lead paint which tasted pretty good. Another source is water. There are thousands of miles of lead pipes carrying city water to millions of homes last that I knew. (Remember Flint, Michigan??) This can be a problem if the water is acidic, then the lead leaches from the pipes and into the water. Some pewter serving vessels and some ceramic glazes contained lead. Do not drink tomato juice or lemonade from these . These vessels are an unlikely source of lead poisoning. I do not think they make these things anymore but there are some old ones about and who knows what amateur potters will use?
As far as "flux" goes... It is variable. There are many "fluxes" one of the predominant fluxes in the past was Rosin, a pine tree product used in lots of things including shoe manufacturing and the bag at pitcher's mound. It can be an allergen. Some people are allergic to it and get allergic rashes.
Multiple studies have shown no risk to solderers in electronic assembly in the past where soldering was done by hand. This was done in assembly where workers soldered 8 hours a day. But again proper hygiene and eliminating oral rout of contamination by little particles of lead is necessary.
Here is my opinion:
Solder fume extractors probably do not meet any standards but cannot hurt. They just take some smoke particles out of the air. Good idea but no where near getting most of the particles out of the air. Can't hurt.
Proper hygiene should focus on hand to mouth contamination with lead. Lead will rub off on your fingers just by handling cold solder, Just look at you fingers after an hour or so of soldering.
There were people who were advertising "chelation" as a treatment for undiagnosed chronic heavy metal poisoning(all sorts of heavy metals, not just lead). Chelation is extremely dangerous and can kill you.
As to the "allergic" reaction described as being "foggy", pardon me if this offends you, that is not my intention. These "unusual" symptoms have been described in connection to all sorts of things, one of them is chocolate.(believe it or not).
I really do not know if these things are really connected to the alleged "allergen" but there are some boni fide real allergists (MDs) who believe it. Things like this are an ongoing topic and I reserve my right to have no opinion except to again say there are some very conservative good allergists who believe in these allergic connections.(maybe "allergic" is the wrong term here maybe "idiosyncratic" to include non allergic reactions?) If this is the case that there is some sort of individual reaction, I would doubt that a standard solder fume filter would eliminate the exposure.
Allergies like "hay fever", (really ragweed or Russian ragweed, i.e tumbleweed) do make people sleepy besides making them miserable. I know, I have hay fever.
Wally
cdev:
Look up "colophony disease" on Pubmed. That is probably what you have.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=colophony
--- Quote from: paul8f on April 01, 2020, 01:04:18 pm ---Hi all,
as a teenager I spent hours and hours in my bedroom putting veroboard projects together and tinkering around with devices as many of us did when we were younger. The trouble is that I was the eldest sibling, and neither of my parents had a clue as to what electronics involved, never-mind the health&safety aspects of my hobby (...which later went on to become my career).
With no mentor or guidance, I proceeded to do a lot of 60/40 soldering in a small room with no filter fan or air extraction unit. I at least had the common sense to crack the top window opening, and blow the fumes away while soldering, but I don't think these practices were enough. Now approaching 40, I can't do 30 seconds worth of soldering without getting a headache, and instantly becoming totally run down with tiredness. The combination of these two symptoms I suppose you could compare to 'brain-fog.' I am currently working in the opto-electronics industry where I can avoid soldering, but I am very eager to get back to my first love of electronic debug and repair. The stress of not doing a job that I like is slowly killing me, and I urgently need to change something.
So my question is regarding how I should proceed with getting on top of these health issues... Has anyone ever been tested for chronic heavy-metal poisoning, what's involved, and if it's treatable what are the options available? (Not sure what I'm going to do with the current restrictions regarding the coronavirus COVID-19 crisis, but now is the time for me to gather all the advice that I can.) Please, please share your experiences or stories. I'd appreciate any weblinks too that may help.
Thanks, Paul.
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You might want to consider a powered heat recovery ventlator (such as fantech, with an aluminum core) to remove the fumes at the source and exchange your stale indoor air with relatively fresh outdoor air
They'd also reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 in any indoor space. If I was an employer I would definitely get one for my work area. put the registers for the exhaust part behind / above the work desks.
MAybe you should see if n-acetyl cysteine reduces your fatigue symptoms. NAC is a precrsor of glutathione, which is the body's natural antioxidant. Its a good thing to take for any respiratory condition.
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