Darkroom with Infants in the house

[Zach In Israel]

Due to the lack of good local labs around here I'm thinking about putting in a simple darkroom. The problem is that we have a 2 week old baby in the house. So I am a bit concerned about having all the chemicals around. (An my house like most in Israel doesn't have a garrage or basement)

We have an upstairs bathroom that is not used much, There is a laundry room that might work well. though with the washer in there I'm not sure how much space would be usable. However it has water, power and an outside door that can be used for ventalation. Any ideas?

This would be for B&W in 120 and 4x5 format.

[Mike Davis]

Due to the lack of good local labs around here I'm thinking about putting in a simple darkroom. The problem is that we have a 2 week old baby in the house. So I am a bit concerned about having all the chemicals around. (An my house like most in Israel doesn't have a garrage or basement)

We have an upstairs bathroom that is not used much, There is a laundry room that might work well. though with the washer in there I'm not sure how much space would be usable. However it has water, power and an outside door that can be used for ventalation. Any ideas?

This would be for B&W in 120 and 4x5 format.


My darkroom is in a laundry room with an outside door as well. I put up a wall to separate the darkroom from the washer and water heater. Darkroom size is 5ftx7ft. Shelves above and below the sink/wetside and a cabinet base for the enlargers on the dryside give me enough room to store what I need. You would probably want cabinet locks on the cabinets and or a lock on the door.

[Ash]

Keep the child in a well-ventilated area of the house, and possibly shut off the darkroom completely. Don't let them in the hallway near the room. If your partner can smell the chemicals then it's not ventilated enough :)

Make sure it can be ventilated separately from the living area if you can. I've not seen any adverse effects from a few years of modern chemistry on my own body. I take frequent breaks from darkroom work when I do it (a couple hour stretch, max).

[Nick_3536]

Laundry chemicals can be far worse then anything in your darkroom.

[Donald Qualls]

Not to mention household cleaners. The most likely things in your house to harm your baby are traditionally (at least in America) stored beneath the kitchen sink: scouring powder, dishwasher detergent, mopping liquid, furniture polish, etc.

Lock the chemicals in a cabinet when not in use, lock the darkroom door when you're in there, and make sure it's kept clean (easy to do with tile and other hard bathroom surfaces), and it'll be no more hazardous than the kitchen. FWIW, common B&W chemicals (not counting toners) are also a great deal safer than the paints and glues used in most model building hobbies, fuel for model airplane engines, lanterns and grills, or lawnmowers, fertilizers and pesticides for a garden -- the list goes on and on. To be extra cautious, you might consider setting up a darkroom free from metol (select developers on this basis) and sulfur dioxide (avoid acid fixer, make neutral fixer from hypo crystals and sodium sulfite), between them responsible for the vast majority of B&W darkroom health issues.

Worth noting that, once the Daguerreotype era was over, the life expectancy of photographers and darkroom workers hasn't been any different from that of folks who avoided chemical exposure of all kinds...

[Louie Powell]

Zach -

I had a darkroom when our kids were small, so I fully understand your initial concern. What you may not appreciate is that as your kids get older, the direction of the threat reverses. Then, you won't be concerned about the potential risk to the kids, but rather about the mischief that they can do to the darkroom if they get in!

I had a dedicated darkroom and solved the problem by putting a lock on the door. But an alternate solution would have been to put all of the chemicals into a cabinet with a lock.

[RDKirk]

To help your planning, running water is not an absolute necessity in the darkroom, as long as water is easily available. So you can conceivably use a different (more securable) room.

[John Kasaian]

I have a darkroom/bathroom with two little ones growing up in the house and found it to be no problem. I secure all chemicals of course and clean up afterwards. A good bathroom fan deals odors very well IMHO, especially if you go with overkill on the cfms and the new ones are very quiet unlike the old ones. FWIW I don't even use the darkroom/bathroom for developing film except for unloading the film holders---instead I use a Unicolor Processor on the kitchen counter---its closer to the fridge and the cold beer thats inside!

[Andrew O'Neill]

My first darkroom was in Japan. I took a small corner in the kitchen. My walls were several layers of black plastic garbage bags. I was printing 120 and 4x5 at that time. I had an infant son at that time. Later, we moved into a larger apartment (in Japan) and along came my daughter. I was lucky to get a spare bedroom for a darkroom. It was a bit of a pain having to go in and out of the room for water, etc, but I did it that way for 7 years (3 in the plastic darkroom...where I almost suffocated and melted away from the extremely humid summers!)

[Joseph O'Neil]

Laundry chemicals can be far worse then anything in your darkroom.

Exactly true. I have my darkroom in my basement, and I treat my photo chemistry the same way I treat any other potentially hazardous household cleaning agents. My two children, 16 and 9, are still alive and kicking.

good luck
joe

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

Good advice above, especially about avoiding metol.

For regular B&W darkroom work I use our laundry room.

I take a number of precautions: I use safe chemicals (primarily Xtol and Hypo). Dry chemicals get mixed outside or a lab-grade fumehood in a second darkroom in a shed (I use some really nasty chemicals out there, but for regular photo work I think a balcony would do fine), I do not use the counter next to the laundry machine for anything other than laundry, I mop the floor every few days, and finally my 2 year-old is not allowed into the laundry room. The hardest part is the last, especially with her screaming "DAAAAA!" and shaking the wooden gate which keeps her out.