Re: Coming Out of the (well ventilated) Closet - with glut

> I do put the hardener in the gelatin. I do use glut.

I'll relate my experience with glut. I wanted to try this stuff, so I
got a 100ml bottle of 10% glut. Reading all of the MSDS information on
the stuff made me wary of it, so I put on a respirator, and took 10ml
in 90ml of water to create a 1% solution. Christine advised that she
was using this stuff at about 0.0125%, so I used that proportion in a
3% gelatin solution. After dropping the small amount of 1% in the
gelatin, I reasoned (incorrectly) that the amount was SO small that I
could dispense with the respirator for brushing the sizing onto my
Fabriano Extra white. I sized about 4 full sized sheets of paper, put
them on drying screens and disposed of the remaining gelatin+glut. I
turned on my heavy duty exhaust fan and left the workroom. About 15
minutes later, my throat started getting scratchy, and I got a killer
sinus-style headache.

Now the thing that concerns me about glut is that it has very little if
any odor, unlike, say, formaldehyde. So you really get no sense if you
are being exposed or not before the symptoms show up. As soon as the
throat irritation began, I decided to get the paper the hell out of my
darkroom, so I went back in there (with a respirator) and moved the
sized sheets to my detached garage for drying. I ran my exhaust fan in
the darkroom for two days, and I have had no problems since then with
any reactions when using my darkroom.

But the story goes on. Three days later, I was in the garage getting
something right before driving to work. Reasoning (again, incorrectly)
that the paper had three days to out-gas, I had this moment of Ben
Franklin style curiosity (Hmm, wonder what would happen if I flew a
kite during a lightning storm???...Dumb, dumb dumb, I know.) and went
over to the paper and gave a very brief, very shallow sniff about 6
inches away from the paper to see if there was any odor. Well, about 10
minutes later on my drive into work, my gums got numb and the screaming
headache returned. Needless to say, the glut is going to be disposed
of.

Maybe I'm really sensitive to the stuff. I don't know. I am not one of
those people who swoon and complain about chemical sensitivity when I
get on an elevator with a person wearing a lot of cologne or perfume.
But this stuff seems to be particularly nasty. And apparently it is a
sensitizer, according to the MSDS. Which means that you can develop the
sensitivity to it (like metol in some people) where even a small amount
can cause a reaction.

Caveat emptor and read the MSDS.

Clay
Received on Sat Mar 12 10:35:03 2005