carbide graver health risks

[ken dixon]

Hi,
I got a couple of square carbide gravers from GRS and the package had a warning about the hazards of the dust from grinding. Is it something to worry about grinding something as small as a graver? I'd like to here some opinions other than the legal warnings GRS is probably required to include. Thanks Ken

 

[Ray Cover]

Ken,

All....ALL gravers contain minerals and materials that are not healthy for us in large quantities. Things like nickel, copper, cobalt, iron, etc. any of these are poisonous in large quantities and they are all found in the types of steels used for gravers. But sharpening a few gravers a couple times a day won't cause cancer.

The real danger is in the grinding dust. The danger is in getting little microscopic slivers that have been ground off the graver stock into your lungs. This is a danger with even mild steel dust. This stuff can tear up your lung tissue like fiberglass or asbestos (especially if they are materials that your body cannot absorb or get rid of and they accumulate over time).

Some of the folks on the Knife network forum recently had a discussion on dust collectors for their power hones. Frankly, I don't get enough airborn dust from my powerhone to worry about but it does make a mess on the bench. So I have started using a collector made from a bleach bottle that Scott Pilkington described in the KNet discussion. It works pretty well. If you are kicking up airborne dust and are concerned about the dust you can always get a cheap vacuum and make a dust collector for your hone.

Go to the knifenetwork forum and look at some of the solutions folks have come up with over there. There are some pretty good ideas.

Ray

Ray

 

[jimzim75]

Hi Ken,
I would agree with Ray. I have worked in tool and die, we simple don't do the volume that the warning are design
for. They're talking about a shop with a cloud of partials that hang in the air for ten minutes. You would literally have to
have your nose to the grind wheel, to get enough to be dangerous. For the amount of grinding that we do.

Of course there is something to be said for keeping a clean shop. Cleaning once a week, which I know we all do, and not letting a layer of dust a quarter inch thick build up. Is a good idea.

The real danger is use the 260 grit to shape ten blank a day, every day of the week. My shop isn't that big. I don't know
many that are. Using a 1200 or 600 grit is not going to produce hardly any dust. As long as you don't go through a
grinding cycle and have gray fingers and then decide to eat you lunch without washing up. You should be okay.

 

[AllanFink1960]

A bit about safety in art studios.

Poisons enter your body three ways. 1) you inhale them, 2) you swallow them, and 3) they absorb through your skin. Many art materials are dangerous at more than one level.

I agree with Jim, that for some kinds of "threats" like grinding a tiny graver on a powerhone isnt going to make a very big spike on the toxicity charts. If you are worried about dust particles getting into your lungs, you can wear a dust mask while you are grinding. Be sure to get one rated for the size of particles you are using. Also some metals travel through your bloodstream and "park" themselves in the bone cells of your skull, and once they are there, you have to live with them and their consequences.

Personally I am more concerned about the solvents, because they are much more invasive and do more damage. If you use a lot of solvents, like acetone or laquer thinner, or coleman lantern fuel or you will want to get a mask rated for aeromatic hydrocarbons, which are really nasty when inhaled as a gas. They attack your internal organs. Also many liquid chemicals will absorb through your skin. Your skin will NOT keep out lacquer thinner, so you will want to wear gloves rated for the materials you handle. And beware, some people are allergic to latex and it does more harm that good. Also gloves promote the growth of warts, so if you break out in warts on your fingers, that might be why. I went through that. I thought I was growing up to be a troll, with 40+ warts ON EACH HAND.

Further, solvents are MUCH more dangerous than their labels warn about, so read the fine print. One woman that I read about nearly died of internal organ failure after doing a lot of silkscreen work (which uses lacquer thinner) and in COURT she found out that the manufacturer said "use in a well ventillated area" but actually meant she was required to change out ALL the air in the room once every FIFTEEN SECONDS. Kind of like working in a wind tunnel. Yeah, WELL ventillated is right. She thought it meant working near an open window.

The absolute worst to be inhaling is actually Magic Marker solvent. It contains a VERY NASTY ingredient called Xylene, which makes that characteristic "magic marker smell". Its the famous serial killer of the poison world. If you use a lot of markers, beware.

If you are worried about harm from exposure to metals, your doctor's lab can test your blood for the metal concentrations in your blood. It wont tell you if your lungs are scarred up, but it will tell you if you are getting poisoned by them. They can also measure your lung health by having you exhale into a device that measures your lung power, used to monitor asthma.

Also as part of your regular doctor checkup, have them take blood and test for liver and kidney damage, which many art materials affect the most. If you have a lot of headaches or blurred vision, you may just need new glasses OR it might mean you are getting intoxicated from something in your studio, (like getting drunk only not as entertaining and much more damaging) so keep your symptoms in mind when you talk to your doctor.

Most people have pretty high tolerances to chemical things, and wont get any adverse symptoms until they become very toxic (higher than safe levels of poisons in your system). But I have a lot of topical allergies and reactions to many chemicals and I was having a LOT of troubles for a while, so I studied up on all this.

Two books I would mention:
"Artist Beware" which is like an encyclopedia of poisonous artists materials and what damage they cause...and
"The Artist handbook of materials and techniques" by Moyer, has a realy good section on health and safety.

Sorry to be so long winded but this issue became a HUGE part of my life for a while.

Allan

 

[Ray Cover]

Ralph Mayer is the author of the Artist Handbook.

Ray

 

[glendikes]

Allan has only touched a very special area for me and my working life. Some chemicals and heavy metals we encounter do far more damage than the general public realizes. Some minute exposures, over long time frames, may be compounded in the body's organs to create toxic results. Membership in the "Toxic" club doesn't add to your resume.

Be Safe,
Glen D.

 

[msar24]

Here's a couple of pages out of an MSDS for tungsten carbide.

 

[Mike Cirelli]

Thirty years ago I worked in a steel foundry. I ate so much steel dust it was like being a coal miner. Most guys had lung related problems in their 60's and died in their 70's. But even with masks on you would leave that place and spit black dirt from your lungs. OSHA said it was OK though?? Believe me the little bit of grindings from a few gravers won't do much to you. Just cleanup once and a while and use common sense. If you stick your nose right by the wheel and and breath it in all the time you may have a problem in the future.

 

[Jim-Iowa]

I seriously doubt that it is good for you. But Mikes description of the foundry rings close to home.
I did 8 yrs in a factory spraying paint and inhaling the thinners, doing metal prep and inhaling the grinding dust, and sandblasting(every bag marked that it could lead to silicosis). Not to mention all the dust I inhaled grinding feed and field work and hog dust on the farm. And if you want to get silly I think the most dangerous are the Lysol type antiseptic sprays that kill all bacteria including the good needed bacteria in your lungs. As I said one should be careful, but stressing out over the dangers is more likely to cause heart attack or stroke and end your life prematurely than the stuff they are warning us about.

 

[Tim Wells]

If you are concerned about this type of thing, and in large quantities we should all be; then an MSDS on each chemical we use is good to be familiar with. If any of you want a Material Safety Data Sheet on anything you use chemical wise I can get it from work and email a scan of it to you gladly. Actually, I think they're in pdf format now so they can be emailed as a file to be opened with the free reader from Adobe Acrobat.

For those not used to these; I work in an industrial environment (manufacturing fighter aircraft) and we have lots of nasty stuff like MEK, MPK, acetone, Beryillium copper and on & on and thusly are required by OSHA to have these MSDS readily available to any worker.

I should have 9 ears, 14 eyes and a toe growing out of my forehead by now but I take proper safeguards against being affected. The MSDS will list "target organs" that are known to be affected by each chemical...

PM me if you want and I'll get it for you. It is all good to know anyway even if you don't use but a Qtip worth of acetone at a time. By the way, surgical gloves are useless for keeping things like MPK and MEK out of your hide; it goes right through them and will shortly eat them right off your hands. Nitrile gloves are a bit better than latex for this purpose.

 

[AllanFink1960]

Well, remember too that people are all different. Physical damange from metal filings in your lungs is going to be pretty much the same in everybody. But reactions to chemicals is going to depend on your body's ability to clean them out. For instance, when people get drunk, some people dont have hangovers at all becaue their body processes the alcohol into inert substances exceptionally quickly, while others are sick for days. It depends on your own ability to process stuff. I have nasty reactions to something in black and white film developer and I get large blisters all over both hands from the wrists down (blisters the size of 50 cent pieces) and I have heard of people also getting that same reaction, and some people get those blisters but on their FEET...even though their feet never touch the photo chemistry. Its rare, but ..yeah I am that one guy. I also get rashes from all kinds of plastics including gel shoe insoles, and BAND-AIDs of all things. (try being a little boy in a house full of brothers and grow up allergic to band aids). As I write this I have blisters all over the inside of my mouth from some allergy that I have not isolated yet. I seem to reach a toxicity level quicker than other people, so I have to read labels and watch what I eat and what I put against my skin. Other people never get reactions to the stuff I do, even when they swim in it.

 

[Mike Bissell]

Contrary to what my mother said, I guess it's not a good idea to keep your nose to the grind stone.

Mike

 

[jimzim75]

That is a good reason to keep your hand out of the solvents. I too, have
suffered with dermatitis, for those of you who don't know what that
means, delicate skin. Blondes are more prone to this, but what
happening is the oil in your skin is leached out by solvents.
Then you get burns that look like little water blisters.
The doctor was telling me I would have to change my occupation
if I didn't smarten up. So I did, and the only cure for this is to avoid
exposure in the first place. It's a roll of the dice as to how you'll
be with this sort of damage. It doesn't bother some people at all.
It can be cumulative in effect and all of a sudden you have the
sorest hand in the state. I say again, "Keep your hands out of the
solvents"!



ps,Oh, I forgot to metion that getting better after you've gotten burned is not done in a week. It takes
3 to 4 months.

 

[Dave London]

Aha the aroma of MEK

 

[Big-Un]

Like some of you here, I was "taken" by OSHA and an employer many years ago. I was a high voltage cable splicer at a nuclear power station and the specific directions from the engineers were to clean your hands in trichlorethylene and/or trichlorethane to remove the oils from the skin to eliminate contamination of the splice. To make sure procedures were followed, a quality control inspector was with me every minute I was working on a splice. I discovered, to my chagrin, while still employed there, that these chemicals were a carcinagen that caused liver and kidney damage. Guess what? When the doctor examined me, he asked "just how much do you drink?", which I did not and still don't. To this day, almost thirty years later, I must monitor both organ functions regularly for any change in their enzymes. The lesson here is to do your own research and understand what you are working with before you do something stupid and really dangerous.