Re: Paper - baby oil Digi Negs
Okay, SOME people did this. I remember the 'famed' black fingernails
of Amidol users. HOwever, in y now forty
years of working @ the San Francisco Art Institute in a department
founded by Ansel and Minor, the whole long
period I've been there the mantra has been anti-machismo to the degree
that we always knew about accumulation
of chemicals through the skin. It may have emanated from knowing that
one cannot handle LSD with your hands
without heading toward cyberspace . . . a hint of the digital future eh?
Jack F
On Aug 30, 2009, at 12:10 PM, Judy Seigel wrote:
On Sat, 29 Aug 2009, Argon3@aol.com wrote:
Photographic developers have a similar sort of alergy
curve...everything is
going along fine but one day you're allergic to Metol or
Hydroquinone and
it's serious. When I was back in college "real men never use
tongs" was the
mantra...how much residual Dektol is living in my liver is
anybody's guess
but I wised up relatively early and am very careful nowadays.
Oh, do they ever. I well remember the machismo when I first came
into photography (& they were still developing actual FILM !).
Indeed in those days real men put their hands right in the
developer.... or whatever other poison was called for. But my
students were only students and when I saw them with hands in
developer -- even in wash water -- I felt mandated to smack them.
I note also that, since sources tell us chrome is one of the two
most allergenic substances, and DICHROMATE sounds like it has
chrome, I made a big fuss about that.... And tho the subject isn't
my forte, I'd note that the skin is a permeable membrane, and even
without any nicks or torn cuticles it could admit whatever whatever
directly into the blood stream.
I'm not sure that age group (early college) is ready to submit to
reality, tho they generally humored me. However, they still smoked
in their darkrooms. I'd come in on Monday AM & see the floor
littered with butts. So I mention again here, in case I haven't said
it for a few months....
Aside from the well-known evils of smoking, if you smoke around
chemicals (eg as in the darkroom) they get into the air, and from
there attach to the smoke, on which they ride right into your lungs.
Anyway, not to go too OT or sound like the voice of doom but please
heed
the advice about solvents.
Sparingly if at all.
argon/JG
But the VOICE of doom is GOOD, much better than doom in the flesh.
J.