I’ve been looking for some answers for a while now but just keep coming up with the same thing…when or if you smell fumes through the mask. I have a lousy sense of smell and don’t trust this advice to save me from enhaling resin fumes, so is there any better advice out there about when to change respirator cartridges?? Oh, and what sort of cartridges do people use for poly resin cos I’m not 100% I’m even using the right ones anymore, I’m getting rather forgetful recently. What exactly does the fumes from poly resin do to you and how quickly? Please be realistic with answers as I scare easily, thanks!
I’ve been looking for some answers for a while now but just keep coming up with the same thing…when or if you smell fumes through the mask. I have a lousy sense of smell and don’t trust this advice to save me from enhaling resin fumes, so is there any better advice out there about when to change respirator cartridges?? Oh, and what sort of cartridges do people use for poly resin cos I’m not 100% I’m even using the right ones anymore, I’m getting rather forgetful recently. What exactly does the fumes from poly resin do to you and how quickly? Please be realistic with answers as I scare easily, thanks!
Peace!
One of the rules for using a respirator, is that you must be able to detect if the mask is not fitting correctly or leaking. Which means you must be able to smell the fumes before you reach the exposure limits. If you are not able to smell the fumes you got a problem. You are being told correctly if you can smell it you need to change your filters. You should be using filter which removes organic vapors. The bad guy is the Styrene, which gets even worse if it is exposed to O2 making styrene oxide which may cause the big C. Protect yourself.
Howzit Fat, First rule is to keep your respirator in a ziplock bag when not in use since it will keep filtering if you don’t. Most factory guys change about once a week but that doesn’t seem to fit your situation. Get a 3m respirator( tell salesman what chems you are using), they only cost around $25 with cartridges and prefilters. The cartridges and filters run about $10 so you can change then often enough since your sense of smell is kaput. Maybe every 25 boards or so would be a good choice. Bagman hit the spot about styrene, it’s the killer of the chems when working woth poly.Aloha,Kokua
Thanks all for the replies and advice. I suppose with my poor sense of smell I’ll just have to err on the side of caution and replace every time I glass a board, (and take an extra showere every day).I’m hoping to find a way to avoid having to use poly resin again, as I prefer to build wood boards I’m planning on some kind of wax or oil treatment for the next one and the two EPS blanks I have waiting will need epoxy anyway.