RE: plea to chemists

"such as thiourea", Sepia - Sodium Sulfide...

Chris, I would suspect these as cause for some in a position to be paranoid
to ask questions. Can't Risk Management tell you which compounds they have a
concern with you using?

It might be that individually they are OK, but what about the other things
around your shared work area? What is in the cabinet, or storage area that
other instructors or students use?

Chris, I suspect that they are fearful of letting to many cats out of the
bag. Do you have a set of safety guidelines that clearly spell out what to
do in case someone spills the ????, next to the ???? and how do you contain
it? If you draw these up, I bet they would allow you to continue to teach
your class.
Limit the risks, and you and your students are safe and happy.

EJ Neilsen
 

Eric Neilsen Photography
4101 Commerce Street, Suite 9
Dallas, TX 75226
214-827-8301
http://ericneilsenphotography.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christina Z. Anderson [mailto:zphoto@montana.net]
> Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:48 PM
> To: Alt List
> Subject: plea to chemists
>
> For the first time since I started teaching Experimental
> Photography, Safety
> and Risk Management has more or less told me today that I can
> no longer
> teach the mordancage process because of the chance of toxic
> gas, etc.
>
> I have talked with 6 different chemists over the last three
> weeks about
> whether toxic gas is released with the process. None of them
> have said so.
> But Safety and Risk Management does.
>
> I am NOT pouring glacial acetic acid directly on copper
> chloride. Here is
> the formula:
>
> Into 750 ml water pour 80ml glacial acetic acid.
> Add 30g copper chloride and stir.
> Add water to 1000ml..
>
> At time of use, this "Part A" is mixed in equal amounts with
> 20v hydrogen
> peroxide. The print is submerged in this for a few minutes,
> rinsed (but not
> always well) and then redeveloped into developer or toner, such
> as thiourea
> or sepia.
>
> The last person I talked to said that in the dilution I am
> using, the acetic
> acid will reduce the copper chloride to a salt, not a toxic gas
> (e.g.
> chlorine).
>
> What do you chemists think?? Jon Bailey, Judy Siegel, etc.,
> you've taught
> this process before; what do you know?
>
> The students are very unhappy at this turn of events, as you
> can imagine.
> But I would not want to teach something that has this kind of
> danger to
> students, either. So I really need to know the bottom line
> here...and it is
> frustrating that there is conflicting information between
> chemists and
> Safety and Risk Management. That said, SRM is the final word,
> so I would
> have to convince them they are wrong.
>
> I just don't have any close chemist friends short of this list
> :)
> Thanks in advance,
> Chris
Received on Thu Nov 10 22:38:46 2005