Re: school ventilation

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From: Shannon Stoney (shannonstoney@earthlink.net)
Date: 07/22/01-05:16:05 PM Z


 Judy wrote:

>> the safety and security people will not tell us the number of air changes we
>> are actually getting in the black and white darkroom, so I am skeptical.
>
> If you want to make a so-to-speak stink about it you can get this
> information.

I wrote an email on friday to the chairman of the dept, saying that I HAD to
know before I went back in there this fall. Hopefully that will do the
trick. But my partner, who teaches in the architecture school next door and
has a similar problem in the darkroom over there, could not get this
information out of the people who are in charge of fixing the problem, when
he talked to them last week. They were very mealy-mouthed about it. Our
guess is (1) they know it's inadequate but don't want to tell us because
they were the ones who were supposed to fix it last semester or (2) they
haven't gotten around to measuring it and are embarassed about that.

Last fall some students (including me) did make a stink about the whole
darkroom situation. The result was that a slot vent was put in one of the
darkrooms, over the sink. It vents pretty well in its middle, right under
the main exhaust pipe, but poorly at the ends, and the amount of air going
into it does not seem to be very great. This is why I want to know what the
real air changes are per hour.

It has to be said that the University of Houston is very busy right now
digging out from under the flood that we had in June. A lot of buildings
still don't even have power. So, fixing the darkrooms is a low priority
this summer. But this problem has existed since last fall.

> We had a similar situation at my school for many years... After students &
> faculty protested with increasing acrimony & hysteria, they brought in a
> firm who ripped open the ceiling in relays for years and as far as we
> could tell there STILL wasn't any air. Initially, we were given to
> understand, there was a SPACE up there, but the supposed ventilation
> system simply did not exist. (Rumor added that original contractor was
> somebody's buddy, seems believable if not provable.)

>From what I 've heard, this is more common than one might think. There are
a great many substandard, or even nonexistent, ventilation systems in
schools all over the country. Some people think they have ventilation when
in fact all they have is air conditioning.

The shocking thing about the Glassell school problem is that it was a brand
new state of the art darkroom, it DID have a ventilation system (albeit in
the ceiling, which as judy points out is not as good as a tray level vent)
but it wasn't being used, and there were hundreds of people using that
darkroom, including very young people, very old people, and probably immune
compromised people. Most of the people in my class complained of
"allergies" or headaches but didn't connect it to the darkroom, until the
last day when it was revealed that there had been no ventilation all summer.
The woman who runs that darkroom is a prominent local photographer and
should have known better.

>
> However I add here one strategy I found VERY helpful, both at home and at
> school -- that is, both the stop tray and the fixer tray are COVERED when
> not actually in use. The difference this makes is remarkable. 95% of the
fumes are
> eliminated, or at least reduced to below normal perception.

Just getting people in my dept to cover the trays when they're done working
before they leave has been impossible. I think somebody with more authority
than myself is going to have to emphasize this before anyone will do it.
But, for my own use at home, I'm glad to have this information.

>
> I've also been in private darkrooms that stank, the photographer taking
> the attitude that that's what darkrooms smell like, and/or REAL
> photographers don't mind.

I have found this attitude to be quite common. I wonder why it is that
artists are often so oblivious to the hazards of their trade. I think it is
a form of denial, and also maybe has something to do with the fact that many
artists don't have a background in science, or sort of fear science, so that
they don't want to actually have to understand the chemistry they're dealing
with.

My partner told me that he heard from a faculty member at the University of
New Mexico that three of the faculty in the photography department there
came down with the same tumor. Anybody who wants to get out of denial about
this should read John Pfahl's introduction to the book Overexposure, where
he talks about his own health problems and bout with cancer before he fixed
his darkroom.

--shannon


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