Hello all --
Arriving home after 4 days at College Art Conference to find 111 messages in
my Inbox perhaps leads me to reckless generalizations, but here goes:
First of all, anyone who in this day'n age puts hands in ANY photo
chemistry and dies therefrom is perhaps doing the human race a favor, ie,
removing their stupid selves from the gene pool. So this should be
discouraged in anyone we like (:-) !
Second and third, the SKIN IS AN ORGAN, or, if you prefer, a permeable
membrane. (Think of all the medicines delivered via skin patches.) So I
find myself obliged to say again as I have said so many times before (I
turn my back for one minute and look what happens!), putting your hands in
the soup is a form of photo-Russian Roulette. And the notion of
"hyper-sensitive" may in this case give a false sense of security -- the
term should be simply "sensitive."
For instance, my own first sign of turpentine allergy arrived out of the
blue when I was nearly 30 years old; then, between one day and the next, I
was so sensitive I got hives simply from being in the same room with
someone who had used turpentine earlier in the day. I have been told that
the only other substance as allergenic to humans as turpentine is chrome
-- as in diCHROMATES! But there can surely be many more, with fractions,
byproducts and derivatives in many forms and varieties of photo chemical.
Moreover I've heard it said, and find it credible, that in this era of food
additives and general chemical proliferation, the likelihood of becoming
either "sensitive" or "hyper-sensitive" increases.
Perhaps silver nitrate is no more poisonous or dangerous than common
household products, like drain cleaner, bleach, or cleaning fluid, but do
I want it (or them, for that matter) entering my bloodstream directly?
For instance, I know from doing a variation of the Emerman process that
soaking photo paper in developer even * before * exposing puts metallic
silver into solution; you'll see the tray turn black within a day or two.
No doubt even more silver enters the solution during developing, not to
mention during fixing, not to mention other ingredients and byproducts.
Who does not have a single nick or cut on hands, or even a raw
cuticle, that let in chemistry directly, as well of course as the
above-mentioned permeable membrane? A lot of people seem willing to bet that
it doesn't matter -- but how could it not?
Of course organs that choose to host accumulations of heavy metal, or
other "sensitizer", don't send you a printed announcement. For individual
photographers to risk their own health and safety is I suppose legal. But
should teachers teach with hands in chemistry?
Judy