Fumes from Epoxy Resin?

but paul ..are you sure its the hardener and not you?,,we all know how old veterans smell,longliner

 

John, apparently my other half can tell the difference and interestingly enough, prefers the hardener smell. Hell, I'd be living in the barn if it wasn't for my belly keeping her butt warm at night . . . so you tired of winter yet?

 

winter? where? it was winter here for 2 days on thanksgiving,,but summah is back...but on the "other" subject,, i know guys who at the very first "wiff" of some of the ca-ca we use turn into big red welts,,hard to breathe,,,,,then theres some ( my mentor) worked in the crap for 30 years,,then one day BAM.. dont they call it being "desensitized" it happens with poly alot,, but also epoxy. and once it hits ya you cant even smell the stuff before ya start having a reaction.
well time to clean the pool hehe

 

was 3 degrees this morning,,dont want to hijack this thread ,,but can I move in with you paul?

 

Using any Epoxy it is a good idea to scrub the hardened surface with any detergent before handeling or sanding.

FF

 

When I was a kid, we had small pieces of lead pipe we used to bend into shapes. I know I put that lead in my mouth many times.

We also played with mercury from broken thermometers. I used to keep it in a shoe box in my room. Back in those days, people didn't realize the liquid mercury turned into fumes. I imagine I breathed in a lot of mercury fumes.

In my 20s, I worked with a painting crew. A lot of the old homes in the area had this cement board siding. We used power sanders and wire brushes to remove blistering and peeling paint. Then one day, I found out this stuff was asbestos siding. after that we started wearing a bandana or dust mask. I understand now the EPA requires workers to wear space suits and encase the work area in plastic sheeting before attempting such work.

I guess breathing that saw dust from cutting hundreds of board feet of pressure treated wood when I was a deck installer was not good either.

I bet it will be the epoxy that gets me!

 

try spraying awl-grip. your pose to wear that space suite,hooked up to a diving compressor for ya air,pose to have a "air-lock" before your door to ya spray room, 3 filters for your exhaust , drainage pit, then when ya done painting you have ta separate your paint from your reducer and keep them in seperate containers,,,then bout 50 more minute things.,,what happen to the days of lead paint and pouring ya used oil in the ground?,,heh
P.S.
for you "cold" people,,,its pose to be 80 here today HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE

 

Unless you're using the little tiny tube small one time repair variety of epoxy you'd be plain crazy not to use a good, organic charcoal respirator (about $35), thick latex or nitrile gloves, outside of the house... West, U.S. Composites, does not matter.

When sanding you want a good quality particulate mask, not the cheap things sold at Home Depot.

I did a little piece in the basement one year, because it was winter time, huge mistake... House smelled for DAYS. Good thing the wife was out of town or I never would have heard the end of it

 

There is a bit of poetic license here - but in general it is right. ALL the manufacturers and long term users of epoxy will tell you that ventilation is important.

So if you can ventilate your basement or are doing tiny epoxying jobs then probably no probs.

I have no figures to confirm it but I have noticed a trend in epoxy sensitization (ie build up of an allergy) that older people who don't worry about ventilation seem to be more prone than most.

Working in a badly ventilated area won't necessarily give you problems of that severity, but there are lots of smaller problems like headaches, disruption of sleeping patterns, something like a hangover the next day which come down to not enough good clean air.

Clean air is good!

Best wishes
Michael

 

ok, i can chime in from experience here. i have been using epoxy for going on 5 years now. took a break after katrina for a couple of years to repair other things then recently got back to doing the boat thing. in all the time leading up to the break i spent many hours making panels and parts, attaching them to the boat etc. up to and including experimenting with infusion and more than my share of vacuum bagging. just recently (within the last month) i noticed immediately after working with epoxy i broke out in a rash. and right where they say it would start, on the forearms. needless to say i WON'T be doing any more glass work without a tyvek. i started years ago using west but have used us composites epoxy exclusively for the last 3 yrs. while i know it can't be too healthy breathing the fumes, you just have to love that freshly cured epoxy smell!

 

Surprisingly, epoxy resin is not irritating or allergenic, with some exceptions. But then it's just soup without some kind of curing agent. It's mostly the curing agents that are potentially problematic, and of course, resin that has been mixed with a CA. A resin and CA together are a 'system'.

Systems that use amine type CA's are the ones to watch out for. Certain ones like DETA and TETA and similar are dangerously toxic and very allergenic. The fumes are very bad for you, even though they don't smell very bad (they smell pleasant, in fact). And they make a lot of fumes (volatile), too. They screw up your liver, kidneys and bone marrow and can be absorbed through the skin or inhaled Devcon repair putties use TETA so should be handled carefully.

Systems using polyamines are generally a little less bad and less 'fumey' as well.

The amido-amine systems are less bad still.

Then there are the polyamide systems. These are pretty benign as far as health effects and far less irritating/sensitizing. All of the 'safety epoxy' formulas use these type of CA's. They are stinky, kind of like 'body odor' or sweaty feet but the fumes are not very toxic at all. Most consumer 5 minute epoxies as well as yellow Mil-Spec epoxy primers use this type of CA.

Unfortunately, the gradient of cured-state properties is somewhat opposite the gradient of relative toxicity; the nastier CA's give the best cured-sate properties (generally). That is why most 'aerospace' or high performance grade epoxy systems are very toxic.

As usual, there are exceptions to this, but it is generally true.

One exception to epoxy resin not being toxic/sensitizing is the reactive modifiers. These modifiers are specialty resins mostly used as thinners or viscosity reducers for a basic resin. The term 'reactive' means that these thinners become part of the cured mass, rather than evaporating out before cure. Most epoxy resins are pretty viscous compared to polyester resins, and therefore somewhat harder to handle. So a little modifier is often added to a basic resin like Epon 828 to thin it out. The modifier is also an epoxy resin, albeit an extremely thin one with very poor cured state properties on its own, so a little goes a long way.

Unlike basic resins, the modifiers are always a bit smelly and irritating/allergenic. If your unmixed resin has a noticeable 'chemical' odor, you can bet it has a modifier added. Basic pure resin like Epon 828 has almost no scent at all and is pretty benign as far as toxicity and sensitization.

Jimbo

 

Interesting post Jimbo.
So West 206 contains DETA, TETA,and TEPA according to the MSDS So it is pretty toxic?
I think I am slowly starting to sensitise. Burning around the eyes
and slight constriction of the throat.

How toxic are the Cycloaliphatic poly amines? They seem to be more flexible.
More appropriate for use with Xynol cloth and Lindsay lord scantlings I believe?
Is nonyl-phenyl a reactive modifier?

 

too many big werds

 

Yeah, I'd say it's potentially very sensitizing and depending on how much of each CA is in the mix, potentially pretty toxic as well. TETA is very reactive, curing a 100 gm mass of standard EEW 190 resin (like Epon 828) in only about 20 minutes at ISO standard of 25C (77F). Larger masses cured with only TETA tend to catch fire For this reason TETA is often added in relatively small amounts to accelerate the cure of a system using one on the so-called 'inhibited' amines like the cycloaliphatics. DETA is almost as toxic as TETA. TEPA has to be similar, all three being very similar molecules.

Not the Devcon putty, though; it's CA is all TETA. Everybody uses that stuff too, and often getting pretty sloppy with it molding it to shape and such.

Jimbo

 

I should have added earlier that the reactive modifiers all improve one thing, usually viscosity, while screwing up several other things a bit, like Tg and UTS. They tend to make the cured resin more flexible, improve elasticity and fracture toughness, too (or make it softer with more creep, just depends on your POV).

Another thing they mess up is reactivity or cure time, making the cure time longer always. Sometimes a resin formulator can add a bunch of modifier like Heloxy 62 or 68 and get a nice thin resin that's easy to work with, but cures way too slow. So he then compensates by using highly reactive amine CA's like DETA and TETA. This is a cheap solution.

A more expensive (better) solution is to use a basic resin that is thinner without the modifier (or needs far less of it anyway) and then use an 'inhibited' amine CA, which is safer. The better resin also has much better cured state properties so you can afford to trade off a little more TG, UTS, etc for better handling. The better resin also has more reactive sites on each molecule, so cures faster with less CA, too.

But both a resin like this (Like Epon 862) and that type of CA is more expensive, so guess what? Nobody will buy that product when there is another one on the shelf that seems to do exactly the same thing (cure in X hours) for 30% less money. Who reads all those big words on the labels, anyway

Jimbo