Gag, cough and a couple of extra ears

Richard Sullivan (richsul@roadrunner.com)
Fri, 29 Mar 1996 15:14:58 -0700

Judy Seigal says:
>Hey fellas, if you would read the data sheet on stuff we use every day --
>gasoline, cleaning fluid, laundry soap, rubber cement, rubber cement
>thinner, drain cleaner, laundry bleach, roach poison (well I know you
>don't have roaches in New Mexico-Arizona, how about ant poison?), varnish,
>gin and tonic, tonic, gin, cigarettes, glass cleaner, floor wax,
>anti-freeze, shoe polish, and so forth,not to mention rapid fix &
>hardener, dektol, metol, acetic acid, selenium, etc. etc. etc. , they'd be
>full of the same warnings.
>
>We're not going to bathe in it (except occasionally), eat it, drink it,
>sleep with it, wash down the walls with it. If it's for hardening gelatine
>for gum printing, we'll use something like A TWO PERCENT SOLUTION for half
>an hour or so once or twice a year. If it's for carbon printing it will be
>used only by high-end photographers, ie., those who can do carbon
>printing, and they're probably half-tanned already & it won't affect them.
>So, will you lay off!!!?????
>
>Judy

Ok.. Ok..

I'm probably more than half tanned already, or at least half tanked. I
learned my chemistry the hard way, and am probably lucky to be alive. I
still have the tattered t-shirt from an experiment to make chloric acid by
mixing sulfuric acid and barium chlorate (BaClO6), forgot to dilute the
H2SO4. Wham! Lucky I had a face mask on. We probably share the same distrust
of chemophobics, Susan Shaw to head the list. She confuses industrial
exposures such as guys dripping wet to the skin in dichromates day in and
day out, year after year with us dainty gum printers. HOWEVER, being in the
trade of selling poisons to the the general public, I have to err on the
side of caution. I know. Each err on the side of caution slips us over one
more knotch. Pretty soon we're in LALA land.

Dick Sullivan
Bostick & Sullivan