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

Addendum:

Later, when I actually tried using the glut-hardened paper, I got a lot
of 'birds-eye' behavior in the gum coat (indicating in my view that the
gelatin was too hard and causing the gum to 'bead up'), and it required
quite a bit of brush work to get the coat smoothed out properly. So not
only is it an physical irritant, it did not seem to work the same way
as glyoxal. Admittedly, this could probably be remedied by tinkering
with the amount of glut, but the other side effects make it unlikely I
will spend any time trying to integrate this into my workflow.

On Mar 12, 2005, at 10:34 AM, Clay wrote:

>> 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 10:41:32 2005