cheers
-steve
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 20:26:49 -0500 (EST)
From: Judy Seigel <jseigel@panix.com>
To: alt-photo-process@vast.unsw.edu.au
Subject: more on coughing
Richard Sullivan wrote:
> 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
Precisely. Which is why I find those "photo hazards" books useless. Each
substance is described in worst-case terms, often against what I know from
my own experience. For instance I did a lot of toning with a formula
containing, what is it 37%?, ammonia. Seemed to me it cleaned out the
lungs. The amount was only about 10cc per 100 cc of formula. Looked it up
in one of those books & thought I was dead. Ditto the label from a
container of plain gum arabic powder (Light Impressions) that I copied to
list last year to the general merriment. I mean this is gum drops; they
make it sound like like the transuranics (OK Peter, maybe I didn't get
that quite right, but I'm only an artist). Thus, ironically, these supposed
warnings, by habitually crying "wolf," make us shrug them off, even those
we should attend very carefully.
When they come out with a book that responds in terms of the amounts we
use and our normal exposure, wake me up. Till then, unless I'm fainting,
I'm not interested.
HOWEVER, speaking of fainting, I put horrible coughing in that category:
Every so often I realize that a gum print needs a clearing bath. Sodium
bisulfite is what I have in house, so I use it. 5% solution. Entirely
odorless. But it gives me instant painful hacking cough. Sodium
metabisulfite was recommended by folks on this list. Does anyone know if
it has the same effect?
And finally. Kevin tells us dangers of gluteraldyhyde. Is that related
to glyoxal? Same as glyoxal? Not same? What I used for hardening
gelatine was labelled "glyoxal." At the time someone sent data sheet &
as far as we could tell it seemed less everything-agenic than formaldehyde.
Judy
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