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Is Your Computer Leaking Toxic Dust?
n0alpha writes "A recent study by scientists at the University of Washington suggests that computers emit dangerous chemicals. Specifically, chemicals called PBDEs (poly-brominated-diphyenyl ethers) found in the household dust that collects on your monitor and keyboard could pose a health threat. Scientists say the chemicals have caused developmental and learning defects in laboratory animals and may pose a threat to people and animals. 'It's critical we phase these materials out,' said Suellen Mele, Citizens for Resource Conservation. And some companies are doing just that."
Is Your Computer Leaking Toxic Dust?
Being that they found these toxins on every computer sampled... As an aside, does anyone know what causes "New Computer Smell"? Obviously chemicals but what ones?
Trolling is a art,
no matter what you have and/or do, it will kill you, don't run in front of a speeding truck. no parasute free skydiving, now bungey jumping with only twine. now this.
Ya know what... this is going to be another email chain letter... nimby's going ape over the "new killer problem omg!!!" for the next 3 months.
people... *life* is dangerous... deal with it
...I stopped licking my keyboard when I was 16.
FLR
Well, I guess my computer WILL be the death of me ; ;
Like I could develop a learning disability from chemicals leaking from my... uh... thingamjig...
Crap....
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
Reading this post is bad for my eyes. Going to the toilet to often can give me RSI and serious backproblems. Eating wears out my jawbones. Everything is bad for you if you sart thinking about it. Everything dangerous is called life.
You mean that neon green glow coming from the back of my case is not healthy?
Toxic, it's such a harsh word, how about "Not encouraging to one's health"
they also mentioned that these compounds are found on many electronic devices. Let's just suppose, for the sake of argument, that this dust shortens your life span by 10-15 years. Are we willing to change our lives radically (go back to 19th century living) in order to live longer? Or will we just deal with it as a cost of progress? Like an earlier poster said, everything kills you.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
Here in Sweden the PBDEs are already banned through legislation, and I think the entire EU is on the way towords a ban as well.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!
Seriously, every week we hear about the risks of eating too many carbs and then studies proving otherwise. We hear about why we should buy this and do that. Now we'll start hearing about new improved "Air filters" that remove the new threat of "PBDE"...Only four monthly payments of $69.99! These companies will start cropping up, the moment this story hits the local news channels.
Its kind of sad, but I don't trust most funded scientific studies anymore, they all seem out to snatch our dollar for some other ulterior motive.
Sig it.
If you snort two or three tons of this stuff, over the period of a few days, it will kill you!
Think of the children!!
Umm, if it collects on your puter and monitor, it was already there. Just now it's in one place for easier cleaning.
"Scientists say the chemicals have caused developmental and learning defects in laboratory animals" A lot of substances are harmful in high concentrations and are these compounds not also found elsewhere? Let's take a realistic look at this before we panic and start wearing gas masks when we are within 10 feet of our computers.
Who needs cases anyway? It's a lot easier to change the configuration on my machines if I don't have to mess with those pesky cases anyway.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
So let me get this straight.
Computers
1.Cause neurological damage
2.Cause your eyes to go semi blind.
3.Cause you to become lazy and fat
Am I missing anything here?
-Dipster
If you eat your pets, you have more problems then just PBDEs
Now the accumilate of this chemical through birds is worrysome, just like what has been happeenign with Mecury and Pesticides, but how much of the article is just scare tactics of few to frighten many?
As all things, before anyone becomes overly worried, research. Afterall it takes some odd 100+ cans of diet Dr pepper with saccharine a day to get possible cancer.
Then again, I could be mis-informed
Like geeks keep shit clean anyway. Only thing worse than living in a damp, dusty, mother's basement while consuming week-old moldy pizza is going outside and having the chance that you might be hit by a subway car being ejected from the tunnels ala Speed.
that research causes disorders in lab animals.
Banaaaana!
It's already been documented that silicon valley has the highest incidence of autism in children, as well as a growing rate of infertility. No idea on cancer yet.
Health care people also have increasing rates of autistic children, and at the same time their work environment has become increasingly technical (higher end imaging systems etc) I have not seen breakouts on different professions, expect more studies to follow.
I have four friends with recently diagnosed autistic kids, Parents: radiation technician, nurse, medical equipment technician, programmer, data administrator.
The fall of the Roman empire was attributed partly to the fact that the wealthy and affluent would drink wines out of lead vessels while the poor drank from animal sacks. The wealthy and powerful ended up poisoning their minds and allowed the barbarians to overun them. We may be doing the exact same thing with technology.
Those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it.
I know of a banking software support department that was a victim of toxic overload. Their work area was full of computers, smelly carpet on the floor and walls of the cubicles and chemical emmiting magic markers strewn profusely around the work area. Added to that were stacks of computer manuals emitting printing ink vapors. The coup de grace was the cleaning lady that would spray deodorizer and wipe everybody's cubicle down with a cloth so dirty it probably was infected with several new undocumented life forms. What happened here was a situation where a large bank's database needed repairig, a major change that was to be done remotely from the tech support area. A dozen or so guys sat in on planning the change as well as the head of the department. A considerable amount of time was devoted to developing the proposed change. They diagrammed out the change on their chemically saturated ink pen markup board, the kind that is so common these days in corporations (no mind that junkies sniff the same type markers to get high). While they made their changes the cleaning lady made her rounds, the network laser printer spewed pages and clouds of toxic vapors, the fax machine added to this toll of chemical brew. When the time came to make the changes on the bank's ACTIVE database the mouse was clicked. One guy said as soon as that was done he realized they had screwed up. A banking system that processed tens of millions of dollars per hour was brought to it's knees. These guys were literally poisoned by the conditions prevailing in their work area and it made them look like chumps. There were other signs, particulary a high rate of headaches and one guy even had a sinus infection so bad that he ended up in the hospital(he was taking asprin because he just thought he had a 2 week long headache). While no one source of chemical outgassing is particularly signifigant it adds up.
PBDE's were first used in the 1970. All related patents are expired by now, and the revenue stream is tanking due to increased competition. Time to 'leak' some info to the greens who will happily lobby to have these 'dangerous' chemicals outlawed.
Too cynical ?
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
I am a little confused. My research indicates that computers really don't generate very much dust at all. When they are new, they are very clean and generally devoid of fibrous substances that could be liberated as dust.
I have found, however, that computers make excellent dust accumulators. PBDEs are not only used in computers, but also in children's pajamas, mattresses, etc. - all of which generate large quantities of dust. If there are harmful flame retardant chemicals in the dust, wouldn't that have more to do with the mattress, furniture, and clothing than it would with the computer?
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
Either way, I guess we should all stop licking our monitors and keyboards just in case.
-- null
...may not be your own. There's been a lot of jokes here about how no one's going to live forever and all that bullshit, but there are other considerations than yourself.
r s_ pr.html
Let me give you a *painful* personal example. Three years ago, my six year old son was diagnosed with Autism - a genetic defect that may in fact be linked to chemicals such as these.
It would really piss me off to find that my career was directly responsible for his condition. My wife sent me this article before even Slashdot picked it up and it got me thinking about it.
It's all water under the bridge now, but my son's condition has affected our lives in countless ways including the decision not to have children in the future.
It also made me wonder about this article on Wired:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/asperge
It's how Silicon Valley has the highest rates of Autism in the country. Maybe it's not so much who you mate with, but in what environment...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I am very surprised at the reaction from the community here. I hate FUD spreading fear-mongers as much as the next geek, but this isn't the first time we've learned that we need to actively remove dangerous substances from daily interaction.
Anyone here have exposed their kids to PB based paint? Anyone here use any DDT on their lawn this year?
These chemicals are cummulative and the damage cannot be undone. Let's hope these kind of studies continue to educate law makers.
We really shouldn't be so lax about infant technology that hasn't been fully explored.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
I know you all think that's really funny, but as someone who's done a fair amount of desktop support, I've cleaned many a keyboard/monitor and especially CPU by dusting with a can of air. Which has usually generated a huge plume of dust. Which I've certainly inhaled quite a bit of.
So pardon as I act a little more concerned than you, because this reads much like the stories from 60 year old guys with lung cancer who worked in asbestos plants and whatnot. "Sure, there was all this stuff flying around, but hey, we thought, 'its just dust'" etc.
Please help metamoderate.
Their wipe tests were performed after dust was allowed to accumulate for at least five days. Let's suppose that I regularly remove and ingest the dust from 200 cm^2 of my computer. That would be licking the dust off about thirty square inches of my computer's case.
In that case, I'm being exposed to 40 ng per week, or about 2 micrograms per year. That's about 0.1 mg over the course of my lifetime--a tenth of a milligram.
A recent literature review(1) (abstract and full text) gives a threshold for toxicity due to octa-BDE (the most toxic compounds studied in the wipe tets) as 2 mg/kg (fetal toxicity/teratongenicity, rat and rabbit models.)
The most toxic compound being phased out (penta-BDE; not measured in the wipe tests) affects neurobehavioural development from 0.6 mg/kg (rat and mouse models.)
The carcinogenicity of these compounds is not well-characterized, however any effects seem to appear at much higher exposures that one would expect in the real world.
In other words, these compounds bear watching and the fact that they are bioaccumulative is troubling--but they're definitely not something to panic about. I'd also be more concerned about ingestion from other sources--bioaccumulations in fish and eggs--rather than from your computer hardware. Those problems, in turn, can be addressed through proper disposal of retired computer equipment.
(1) Darnerud PO. "Toxic effects of brominated flame retardants in man and in wildlife." Environ. Int. 29(6):841-53 (2003).
~Idarubicin
"According to other scientists, such as Dr. Gina Solomon, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, there is no need to panic. They say that although the levels of PBDEs are high enough to be worth talking about, they are unlikely to pose a serious threat to human health."
'Nuff said.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
These toxins are produced with DHMO!
SUPPORT A BAN ON DHMO!
"It's a moral imperative."
Ha, ha! Nobody ever says Italy.
I'm sorry, before ABS, the reasonable expectation was that if you slam on your brakes, your wheels lock up and you take longer to stop, and loose directional control of your car.
ABS may make the distance to stop your car slightly greater in dry weather, if you can brake like Niki Lauda or Michael Schumacher.
I know I pretty much can't do that, so I'll gladly slam on the brakes as hard as I can, and let the computer figure it out, I guarantee you that I'll stop faster that way.
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
Is it just me or does everything kill lab rats?
TOOTHPICKS FOUND TO CAUSE DEATH IN LAB RATS
Scientists have discovered that force feeding lab rats 50,000 toothpicks caused death in 99.9% of cases studied. The one rat that survived eventually died from starvation.
"This proves that toothpicks are dangerous and should have warnings printed on them," said Bob T. Scientist, one of the researchers who turned mice into twiching pincushions.
The FDA has yet to comment on this story.
--- This