Slashdot Mirror
Cleansing Hardware Of Dead Pig Odors?
Chagatai writes "My company is one of America's largest beef and pork producers. Recently I took a trip to see a new computer room that had been built at one of our abbatoirs. While the new environment is nice and sanitary, the old computer room had air intakes that were adjacent to the rendering portion of the plant, and everything smells in an almost unholy way. Management is curious if there are any cleaning agents or means of deodorizing this equipment before moving it into the nice, new office. The only products I could find would clean the outside of the hardware, but the internals would still possess the lovely aroma of boiled dead pig parts. Of course, this is a race against time, as I am sure someone will inevitably squirt Pine-Sol into the system to try to make things better. Does anyone have any recommendations to remove the effluvium of post-mortem porcine matter from our machines?"
Back in the early 90s, my dad bought me My First Computer. It was an Macintosh IIcx which was a big, beige rectangle box. Had neat stuff like NuBus and about 12 SIMM slots. I lived in Europe at the time, and the computer was purchased from a graphic design house where *EVERYONE* chain-smoked at their desks. The machine had the most disgusting tar-like filth on *EVERYTHING* inside the chassis. The upstairs of my house reeked of cigarettes.
I literally chipped away tar, vacuumed it, put Bounce sheets over the power supply fan, to no avail. The machine still sits in my closet to this day, and having given it my best efforts over 10 years ago- it still smells of stale cigarettes.
Because of the small nooks and openings in your average computer, I honestly don't think you'll be able to do much about the smell. Unless there are some new commercial/industrial agents that can do the job, you might be SOL. Guess it's time for 3M to create a solvent version of Fluorinert.
Febreze is the key.
It really works on dead things.
I got this tip from a ratcatcher called Sid, who cleaned out a dead raccoon from our crawl space. It worked.
I just used it to nullify the odour of a deer mouse that crawled into my truck's AC and helpfully died.
Go Febreze!
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
I work for Servpro, so sadly, cleaning is something that I know how to do fairly well. Your best bet would probably be to do some research into ultrasonic cleaners. It might be cheaper to buy the equipment yourself depending on how much stuff you need cleaned. Protein odors are pretty hard to get rid of though, definitely one of the worst.
E pluribus unum
Ever seen the TV show mythbusters? It's like snopes for TV. Anyway, they took the myth about the Corvette that smelled so bad that no one could clean it or sell it. They took two dead pigs and sealed them up in a Vette and sealed the whole thing up in a shipping container for a few weeks. Then tried to clean it.
They got a professional crew in, guys that clean out ambulances, crime scenes, etc. The car still reeked at the end of the show, and wound up getting sold for the engine & transmission.
You may be stuck with the stench. OK, random bad jokes : give them to PETA/ADL/vegan society. Give them to Cowboy Neal, no one will notice them over his stench.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
My dad ran a business cleaning up after floods, fire damage and crime scenes (mostly suicides). Some things smell bad. Some require vomiting (like rotten meat). Some are just unpleasant but linger (like the acrid smoke smell from a fire).
Things you can't clean by washing can be put in a tent with an ozone (O3) generator. Ozone is what you smell after a lightning storm: the clean rain smell. Concentrated, it smells sort of like bleach, but sharper.
It's both toxic and cleaning because (as I recall) Ozone happily oxidizes anything it contacts, preferring to be regular O2 + a free radical oxygen atom. The free Oxygen can bond with a molecule of stank and modify it to something less stanky, or it can, say, attach to a molecule in a cell wall and kill the cell.
It's like an efficiently burning fire in slow motion. I think oxidation is part of what makes your skin age; as you age, the damage created by environmental oxidation is repaired less and less by your body, until you just wither away. That's the idea behind taking certain vitamins that are supposed to block the damaging effects of free radicals in your body.
Of course, when you have something that stinks, you'd prefer it be destroyed by oxidation.
Unfortunately, plastics are among the hardest things to clean because they can absorb odors and its very hard to suck the stink back out. Stink isn't just something on the surface you can wipe off in most cases.
Spraying perfume just adds a new smell on top, which might not outlast the stink itself. I think Fabreze is a corn based chemical that works along the same principle as ozone. However, it leaves a residue on hard surfaces; it's designed for fabrics.
Sometimes when you have, say, a guy who dies alone in a house and his body fluids drain through the floor, or, in a moment of anguish, someone decides to end it all using a shotgun, you have a situation where you just need to throw things away.
Gnarly.
http://www.med-chem.com/MSDS/100_iso.htm
That's all I'm going to say. I've worked with all the solvents you've mentioned, in larger quantities than any human being should rightly come in contact with (chemicals plant) and I've got to tell you: They All Suck.
I lost a gf because I was so irritatable after being exposed to IPA (Iso Propyl Alcohol) that I simply couldn't stand to see her. I'd come home, she'd be on the couch, have dinner ready, wearing something provocative... and the only thing that would pop into my head was "God damnit she's here again".
CNS symptoms are nasty for solvent exposure to IPA. I can't even imagine what would have happend if, as you suggest, I had drunk it.
Once I got laid off from that job and no longer was exposed to the fumes, my personality came back to normal. The ex-gf and I are still friends, but she's still doesn't believe me entirely that it was the fumes (tho she's comin around now and then).
Stay away from that crap and remember: Even Alcohols good, Odd Alcohols Kill.