Re: drinking in the darkroom

Judy,
     Yes, it was drinking it. Yes I can give the citation, but you will
have to wait a while because I cannot go fishing through my stacks of
xeroxes at the moment. More important things call me. It might be quicker
for you to check the archives of the list, because I thought for sure I
already quoted this story within the last couple years.

     I was being facetious about the Amstel, but I could imagine a pottery
mug of beer and a pottery mug of pot bi would look the same, especially
while drinking. Certainly not Guinness--it is like coffee. But Blue Moon is
verrrry orangey. As is a lot of stronger beers aside from wimpy watered
down low carb things like Bud.
Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 10:45 PM
Subject: Re: drinking in the darkroom

>
> On Tue, 2 Nov 2004, Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
>
>> Nope, it was potassium bichromate. I have the article from the BJP
>> xeroxed. In fact, I have quite a few articles about this xeroxed because
>> there were a number of pot bi poisonings (as well as severe ulcerations
>> from continually putting hands in vats of the stuff) over the span of a
>> few years which led to a controversy about putting this on a "poison
>> list". Apparently there were no MSDS sheets back then. :)
>
> I was very struck in the early literature by some of the descriptions of
> suffering by workers in dichromate -- in fact (in those days before the NY
> Public Library had copy machines) I copied out a particularly poignant
> one... A first person description of nearly a lifetime of suffering (the
> lesions on the face were excised & returned, etc.) finally attributed
> after many years. However, I don't *recall* mention of *drinking.* I mean
> even in the dark dichromate doesn't taste like beer, does it?
>
>> One pharmacist put pot bichromate instead of pot bicarbonate in a cough
>> syrup and the person died over a period of time.
>
> That's more feasible. We don't savor the taste of cough syrup, rather gulp
> it down, avoiding taste, besides which it's nasty anyway, maybe worse than
> dichromate... Also, that death was "over a period of time." Although,
> maybe all those years of hands in the soup ruined the sense of taste so
> they just kept drinking the orange beer? (Can you give the citation on
> that? I'm curious.)
>
> Meanwhile, I strongly third or 4th Bob's warnings about the dangers. I've
> said this before but it can't be too often repeated -- Remember that some
> workers could put their hands in the dichromate for a lifetime without ill
> effect. But as my own allergy to turpentine proved -- one day it can be
> all over and no going back. After that I wasn't sure I could use photo
> chemicals, let alone dichromate -- which I have SO FAR by extreme caution.
> (For instance, even the trash gets removed *immediately.*)
>
> But it was always a struggle to convince students. The rule in the class
> was gloves for EVERYTHING, even/especially in the wash water where hands
> are more fully immersed for longer periods. But students would come in the
> next week and say their large-format teacher said it was impossible to
> develop (ie flip) film except with bare hands. There are still such macho
> characters around, who, having gotten away with it themselves figure it's
> safe. ("Real photographers don't wear gloves.")
>
>> The thing that surprised me about the beer story was that the worker was
>> drinking beer on the job. A nice mug of pot bi does look just like an
>> Amstel...so he was probably pretty looped and didn't notice it until he
>> drank it up.
>
> Amstel is orange???
>
> Judy
>
Received on Tue Nov 2 22:29:22 2004