From: Shannon Stoney (sstoney@pdq.net)
Date: 12/09/02-09:28:22 AM Z
>I started learning about and doing a little alt process last spring.
>My question is about darkroom ventilation. I live in an old
>brownstone with my wife, and am hoping to build a proper darkroom in
>the basement. The basement has an old workshop which I am converting.
>Can someone give me some advice on proper ventilation, as my wife is
>pregnant and I have stopped developing film etc., until I can figure
>out how to go about this without fumes wafting through the house.
>I normally use HC110, and have just started experimenting with Pyro.
>For Alt (Kallitype kit) printing I went with the HID lamp setup
>illustrated by Sandy King on unblinkingeye.com I know little about
>the specific effects of darkroom chemicals, but had a friend who got
>the shakes after working in a one hour lab for 8 years, so I'm being
>extra cautious.
>Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
You are smart to be concerned about this; too many people are not. I
got sick too from working in an unventilated darkroom. My experience
is that the most dangerous fumes, ironically, are from one of the
least toxic (by ingestion or absorption) chemicals: the fixer.
(Assuming you might be using it for some processes.) It tends to
give off sulfur dioxide fumes as it ages. These can really irritate
your lungs. Of course you know to be careful around pyro, as it is
toxic by absorption also. You might want to look at a book called
Overexposure that details all the hazards of virtually all
photographic chemicals, alt or silver, and tells you how to protect
yourself.
It seems that school and group darkrooms are rarely
well-ventilated, so I made one in my garage. I got a vent hood from
Jon Edwards of Edwards Engineering (eepjon@aol.com). He also has a
website somewhere. This hood is great: it sucks air evenly across
its width because of baffles in it, much better than any venthood
I've ever seen at a school (except the local exhaust fans in
printmaking rooms for solvents). I mounted it at the back of my
sink. My partner helped me attach the fan to it, and it vents to
the alley behind the house. As an extra precaution, I have clear
plexiglass "lids" for my trays that I leave on them most of the time,
and I just lift them to slide a print in.
When I am working in TN, I don't have this wonderful facility and I
solve the problem several ways. I don't print with any chemicals
more dangerous than cyanotype, first of all. To develop film, I use
the BTZS tubes, and I develop, stop, and fix in the tubes. This
minimizes exposure to chemicals. I sometimes do this in the bathroom
on a counter with a plastic sheet over it that can be discarded after
a few times; but I also do it on a screen porch at night in the
summer, where it is very dark, and where I have a fan in one of the
windows.
--shannon
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