No matter how much you know you never know it all. Very important read, takes a few minutes to load so be patient

http://www.brewracingframes.com/id75.htm

Wow, very lucky indeed.

Thanks for the warning

This is why I stopped buying chlorinated brake clean...
It also has benzene in it which give me headaches.

Its nasty stuff that I have survived without for my whole life...except the last two years...I never used it before, and I stopped.

Rich

Thanks for sharing that!! That's a real eye-opener for those of us with welders.

That was actually one of the theories for how the Kursk was sunk. That is a quick way for the dives on a submarine to not equal the surfaces.

I think that the chlorine gas was more the culprit. Also, you can not diagnose chronic bronchitis after 4 weeks. Still, bad stuff. Be careful.

Wow thanks for sharing. He suffered all that from just a puff of smoke. Thats an eye opener

I call BS on this. Sure, phosgene is nasty stuff. It was used for chemical warfare in WWI, but it is a far cry from the nerve agents used in WWII that could kill in moments in small quantities. Phosgene is just noxious and corrosive. Likewise chlorine. A small puff, as described in this story isn't going to result in kidney failure and all that. It's exaggerated, or the guy was in bad shape to begin with - something is missing. That said, chlorinated solvents should be avoided due to their being possible carcinogens. They are great solvents, both for car parts and human parts. They are are fat soluble and will go thru your skin and linger inside you. I'm a chemist btw.

A agree that his litany of medical issues do not reflect a small puff of smoke. Acute renal failure, and insulin resistance dont make sense. The respiratory stuff does. There is no way I can think of that the aforementioned chemicals would make him insulin insensitive. This has nothing to do with the pancreas. If you are using exogenous insulin and your sugars are still high then a working pancreas would do you no good anyway. I dont know if I call BS, but I have my doubts.

No doubt the chlorine makes it worse!
Hexane combos are toxic as well! Better safe than sorry!
"I wonder if my cancer is from breathing solvents, smoking malboros, or the endocrine disrupting chemicals in my bottled water?"

"Some attention is given to California in this study because
the first cases of n-hexane-induced peripheral neuropathy
in the vehicle repair industry were identified in the San
Francisco Bay Area and because air quality rules in that state
inadvertently created a market in this industry for solvent
products formulated with hexane (beginning in 1990)"
Wilson, Hammond, Nicas, Hubbard. Worker Exposure to Volatile Organic Compounds in the Vehicle Repair Industry. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 4 (301-310) May 2007

Schwarzman. Potential Toxicity of Synthetic Chemicals: What You Should Know About Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals, American Family Physician, September 2008

My interest level on this subject on this is not high enough to do any research. I'll give you guys the benefit of the doubt. Either way, I'm going to be careful when I'm welding.

If you want to hear about some nasty stuff, look up otto fuel. It makes its own oxygen as it burns. It doesn't kill so much as make you sick in a hurry and cleaning it up without igniting it is complicated.

Yikes! Thanks for sharing.

While talking about welding, you also want to be careful with CO2/N2 tanks. While N2 is just an asphixiant, CO2 is toxic at certain levels. Its IDLH (immediately hazardous to life) level is 5%, so try not to breath it in if you're venting a gas bottle.

Good information. I have a 20 pound bottle of CO2 hooked up to my kegerator in my kitchen.

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?showtopic=97971

Burning Zinc off metal is another to beware of...

http://www.anvilfire.com/iForge/tutor/safety3/index.htm

Phosgene in concentrations of as little 3-5ppm can be fatal if the exposure is long enough. That can be as little as 30min to an hour for normal healthy humans. Everyone is different but this is definitely something you don't want to mess around with. Supposedly it smell like freshly cut grass or hay but I wouldn't want to find that out personally.

These are my favorite posts. Where someone posts a safety tip (in this case one that while not well known is true) and then someone comes in and says it’s BS. Especially when the precautionary action is easy to perform. Why advise people to do something that is unsafe?

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call the story in the link total BS, but some things about the story seem ... embellished, I'll just say.

I mean, the story is accurate from several technical details (color of the cloud, chlorinated solvent exposed to high temperature presumably pyrolysis of the compounds resulting in some phosgene, delayed symptoms up to 48 hrs) ... but the symptoms seem a bit off to me, as others have said. In my experience as an accident analyst for a chemical weapons depot, phosgene is pretty nasty stuff but not usually fatal unless someone is very susceptible / sensitive. Typically, it will ultimately cause death (in high levels of exposure) via pulmonary edema and/or heart failure, not kidney failure. But that's just what I'd learned, and that was a while ago since I worked in the CW field.

Here's a link to what the CDC says about phosgene, in case people are interested.

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/phosgene/basics/facts.asp

I'd be cautious about welding anything that may contain chlorinated hydrocarbons (such as piping that may contain or has contained refrigerants, which are typically chlorinated hydrocarbons), but that can easily be remedied by flushing the system properly prior to welding on it. Similarly, by allowing cleaners and solvents that may have chlorinated hydrocarbons to evaporate thoroughly prior to welding/heating up the parts cleaned with 'em, I would think that is a simple and smart thing to do.

Luckily for me, I don't weld.

- Nelson

All I know is that I had never used Brakclean until probably last year...that is never ever.

I always used carb cleaner, or simply green.
Both take a little bit more elbow grease, but the result are the same.

then I was introduced to the wonderful world of Brakclean.
I was cleaning some really cruddy stuff with it...yet I kept leaving a very well ventilated area with a headache, and a bit of nausia.

I figured I was just tired...no big deal.
then I ran out of brakclean.
I went back to may favorite cleaning solvents.

Then..got a new can....headache, nausea..etc etc.
I finally read the can.
Chlorine and benzene....sweet.

never used it since I actually read the can.

Rich