Litterally allergic ? To minimize breathing the fume, I hooked my processor to the CMV via flexible pipe visible on the left of the picture, and the room also has a good extracting vent.
Litterally allergic ? To minimize breathing the fume, I hooked my processor to the CMV via flexible pipe visible on the left of the picture, and the room also has a good extracting vent.
I have far more serious ventilation and fume control in my darkroom already, that is, the "wet side" of things. My printing per se is done in completely different rooms with their own air. Over time many people do get sensitized to various kinds of chemicals, and afterwards, it takes very very little exposure to trip an adverse reaction. I knew lab owners who eventually couldn't even walk into their own buildings due to sensitization. It will happen to somebody doing inkjet too someday due to glycol sensitization. This might accrue somewhere else entirely, like working a lot with latex paints in a previous career. But a lot of large inkjets drying in an unventilated room will be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back. Some of the effects for me personally are not immediately apparent. For instance, I might
not even notice any problem, yet my respiratory system will suddenly be far more sensitive to catching things like a cold. Or after a week or two my throat will feel
raw. Of far greater danger are hypersensitivities that turn into sudden and potentially fatal analphylactic shock. I knew a couple of lab people whose careers ended that way. They lived after their ambulance rides, but absolutely had to give up their photo business.
Speaking of allergies, in july 1983, a friend took B&W pictures of my band on stage and I helped him to do the proof-sheets. I took them home in a plastic bag and put them in my sink. I woke up in the middle of the night with a huge rash from the fix, scratching my body like crazy for a couple of hours ! Next morning, I carefully took them out of the water for drying. But not carefully enough, as an hour later, my shoulder and neck (only) were all red and itchy. Problem, we had a photo sessions schedueled that day for the cover of the upcoming album ! Lucky me, the rash was gone by the time we started shooting...
Now that's scary... OK, I'm going digital !!
Half of digital is RA4. The more popular half, namely inkjet, is still going to pinch somebody, just like I said. Not a lot of glycol there, but enough to become a problem over time. It's already being slowly phased out of residential housepaints completely due to various air and health issues. Just gotta use common sense. Inkjets take a week or two to outgas; so you need at least a bit of ventilation when that transpires. But I obviously have my own sustainable method for working with RA4 safely.
It just requires mild weather so the temp inside the drum remains stable for that two min dev cycle. I keep the tempering box nearby, and for critical work use
noryl drums - one of the most expensive thermoplastics, but the variety with far better thermal insulating properties than the usual suspects.
Oh that plastic rash thing... Ha! I walked into Costco with my wife the other day and at the very entrance there was a huge display of these silly jogging wrist whatevers that tell people how many calories they're supposedly burning. They're quite a fad at the moment, but there is also a simultaneous epidemic of horrible
wrist rashes, which the mfg of these things "just can't explain". BS. This is just one more example of how outsourced crap is being made with obscene amounts of
phthalate plasticizers. People are mysteriously getting the "flu" in stores where this kind of stuff is sold, or present in quanitity. I got a rash from even the rubberized
handles on my new North Face trekking poles, even after I heavily scrubbed them with alcohol and let them outgas a month first. To hell with it. I replaced the damn
things with true Austian-made pole using real rubber (cork is fine too), not plasticized, rubberized vinyl. I got a rash even handling my new Big Agnes tent a couple years back. Fortunatley, that had dissipated by my second backpacking trip. Somebody in the EPA needs to wake up.
Watch out for the marmots - they like cork. Was brushing my teeth one morning before breakfast and a marmot that had been watching went over to my tent and started gnawing the cork handle on my hiking pole.(cork is fine too)
Thomas
The adolescent marmots can sure be cute and friendly, but I never quite trust their intentions. One befriended me up in the Clark Range early one summer, almost
like a pet. But the minute I turned my back he tried to get into my pack. And the tamest ones seem to be the wildest, not those accustomed to people like pesky
regular squirrels or chipmunks. I've even had pikas try to raid my pack at nite, even though they tend to be very reclusive critters. ... But troublesome? I'd reserve
that description for mtn goats. I had finished some shots with my Sinar right along the edge of a glacier in the Enchantments in WA. There were goat track right
smack at the edge of the void, where wouldn't didn't dare step. So I tracked em about a mile and came onto the herd raiding a campsite. The goats were working
as a team, tag-teaming the campers, just like a pack of clever coyotes! One poor dude was hopping along on one foot, with a half-tied boot on the other foot,
chasing a goat. Another goat was diverting another camper with a chase; and this allowed a little goat to outright run off with the remaining unattended boot, and
no doubt chew it to bits at his leisure. Something worse happened to my nephew when a Kea (giant parrot) grabbed one of his Koflach boots on Mt Cook in NZ,
and then dropped it almost two miles away on the glacier below. Good things he had a telephoto lens to look for it. But his buddy had to spend an entire
day crossing crevasses to fetch the thing.
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