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Desktop 3D Printers Shown To Emit Hazardous Gases and Particles (acs.org)
An anonymous reader writes: A new study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology by researchers at Illinois Institute of Technology and The University of Texas at Austin sheds more light on potentially harmful emissions from desktop FDM 3D printers. The researchers measured emissions of both ultrafine particles (UFPs) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from 5 commercially available polymer-extrusion 3D printers using up to 9 different filaments. [The researchers] found that the individual VOCs emitted in the largest quantities included caprolactam from nylon-based and imitation wood and brick filaments (ranging from ~2 to ~180 g/min), styrene from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) filaments (ranging from ~10 to ~110 g/min), and lactide from polylactic acid (PLA) filaments (ranging from ~4 to ~5 g/min). Styrene is classified as a "possible human carcinogen" by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC classification group 2B). While caprolactam is classified as "probably not carcinogenic to humans," the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) maintains low acute, 8-hour, and chronic reference exposure levels (RELs) of only 50, 7, and 2.2 g per cubic meters, respectively, all of which would likely be exceeded with just one of the higher emitting printers operating in a small office.
Ummmm, duh? You're melting plastics in order to reform them into another shape. It doesn't take a study to realize you shouldn't stick your face in and breathe deeply.
And now we are suddenly surprised that manufacturing plastics from toxic chemicals actually released toxic chemicals into the air. Even when you do it in your own home. Who would've known.
It would seem that the best approach is simply to 3D print things in a well-ventilated area. Lots of things are toxic if exposed to sufficient concentrations. In the absence (for now) of alternatives to the toxic chemicals, the best advice is ventilation and avoid the areas as much as possible where printing is being done.
Doesn't every single printer and every single guide say to use in a well ventilated area for obvious reasons? You don't want to solder in a small office with no ventilation either.
If so, call us now for a free consultation. You don't pay a dime unless we win the settlement."
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
....must be time to ban them.
They should print themselves a face mask.
Whatever happened to all those claims of illness from photocopiers and laser printers? ... dust ... nanoparticles? Or those evil LASERs?
Was it ozone
Dudes: 3D fart printers! Far out!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
This is getting ridiculous. A moment's thought would make it obvious that the emission rates quoted in the summary are wrong by orders of magnitude. Are there even home printers today that can extrude as much as 180 g/min of material, never mind vaporize or aerosolize that much?
Ensure ventilation and don't breathe in the fumes just like when working with solvents and a pile of other things you don't want inside your lungs.
Man, ever spend 8 hours in a small office with one of those? Talk about emissions!
We can only hope that 3-D printers are someday as safe as chemistry sets.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Apparently one of the gases is "probably not carcinogenic" and the other is only classed as a "possible human carcinogen" so really the title should read "Desktop 3D Printers Shown to Emit Gases some of which might be hazardous". Not to mention that if the safe exposure level is 50g/m^3 that's almost 5% by weight of air so either someone messed up the units or one of the gases emitted are safer than carbon dioxide and nobody suggests that we ban candles.
...for the inevitable lawsuits by California bottom-feeders under Prop 65.
Because who hasn't had an operator of one of those companies machines see your FFF machine and say, 'wow, that's just as good as the $100,000 X machine I run for Y'?
ads stink more than fatty driving their stinky horsy carz
whats different with the older study? the new nylon, wood filaments?
the old study that was at some media quoted as OMG IT KILLS YA actually when covered correctly was titled about "3d printer as hazardous as cooking".
and well if you cook your peek/teflon parts in the extruder then thats pretty hazardous..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You're usually okay if you stay upwind, right?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It seems like a cheap little activated carbon mesh filter in front of a small fan would take care of most of the particulates. Does anyone know of something like that, or something else cheap and easy, would significantly reduce the VOCs?
This being Slashdot, I'm sure some readers have a strong opinion and no clue, but I wonder if someone here actually knows about filtering o absorbing VOCs.
Just print out a Know Your Chemical Hazards sign and keep right on printing!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What is that smell?
Uhhh, it's the printer?
Well, turn that thing off, It smells like a sewer! The whole basement reeks.
Sure Mom... (eats more Cheetos)
All you shit nerds in some years are going to be even more gaunt and emaciated, bald frommchemiotherapy and dying, dying, dying, dead.
what you can DETECT rather than what's actually significantly harmful, and without any tether to the reality of the relative risks, you will regulate everything and panic over everything eventually as technology gives you an ever-increasing ability to detect. This is one of the big problems with the EPA. When President Nixon created that agency, it merrily started regulating based on detection. A huge know-nothing portion of the population has now been raised in this anti-science omni-political activist environment falls for any shrieking by any group that points anything it chooses to, never knowing the truth about why a particular person or group decided to start whipping-up panic over a particular thing.
Example of this modern madness: Mankind has used mercury thermometers for centuries; they've saved more lives and advanced human understanding of the world more than any person could possibly quantify. Several years ago at a public school in Southern California, a student in a science class accidentally broke one in the lab - and the school had an evacuation and a HazMat team was called-in wearing full protection suits to clean-up the "toxic spill". There were weeping mothers on the evening news worried about the permanent harm their children might have suffered...
Odds that any person will be permanently harmed or killed by fumes from a 3D printer? Zero
Odds that a user of a 3D printer will be permanently harmed or killed by drugs, or alcohol, or base jumping, or a vehicular accident?
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what to worry about, and whether to panic over the next obnoxious moron trying to generate publicity and scare you into demanding the government control even more of your life.
But my 3d printer is a volkswagen
Emitting hazardous gases and particles? Sounds like my friend Steve.
"Mostly"?
My uncle died when working with a chemistry set and standing upwind. He was just reducing CuO with Mg, standing upwind, when a drunk truck driver drove an 18-wheeler into his house killing him instantly.
Now if he only stood downwind, these 3 meters would have saved his life.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Wow... Oh, wait a sec. Didn't we already know that melting/burning plastic releases toxic fumes? Did people think that wouldn't be the case if a computer was involved?
As in Sci-Fi author Daniel Keys Moran and his sister? That's hardly an insult, "The Long Run" is one of my favorite books!
And rightly so. Having a beard and checked shirt will merely hasten the death by hipsterism in additional to the risk of a crazed AirBnB host.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I have a small office with 3 Maketbot 2s and 2 Makerdot 5s running PLA. Occasionally the smell is enough to make me leave the room, but I've found that a change in diet will clear that right up.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
Since apparently everything suddenly causes cancer in that state the simple solution is to just stay out of California.
temperature had a bigger effect on particle emission than the extruder temperature.
http://pubs.acs.org/appl/liter...
This implies that a lot of particle emissions are coming from the bed/print interface. What would cause that?
I manage 6 of these machines all tucked into a not particularly well ventilated corner of a room at the makerspace. I'll be taking this seriously.
Tagged as "WTF?!".
But hey, it's only probable that it'll also give you "leukemia, lymphoma, and other stem, blood, and bone marrow cancers", so let's totally play it down.
Actually it is only possible, not probable, and as such from a carcinogenic point of view is technically less dangerous than bacon which the WHO classes as "probably carcinogenic". As far as the summary is concerned it is more a case of "let's just mention this slight possibility of cancer and not mention any other of the apparently proven and very serious effects of the gas". If this summary had been written about the dangers of guns it would have probably only have discussed the possibility of lead poisoning.
Lactide: Solubility in water[1]: Hydrolyses to lactic acid[2]
[1] which I contain plentyful quantities
[2] which I also already contain
So nothing special about PLA. Smell of overheating corn starch mostly.
Dude that's probably the best analogy to some of the most stupid arguments against science ever. I wish I had mod points to upvote you.
All of my 3d printers are in a air-tight case with negative gas pressure and an exhaust fan going out a modified dryer outlet in my basement. Problem effectively solved. My problem was (other than suspecting that there were volatiles, and hating the dust generated by my CNC machine all the time.) I have a very sensitive nose and for some reason those smells stay with me and annoy the crap out of me (especially PLA) and make me sneeze if I am around them too long. That I could not deal with so I built a case and exhaust system.
[looks over shoulder of co-worker] "Whatcha treedee printin'?"
[responds with a look of gritty determination:] "CANCER"
I once came across a CAT5E cable with a warning that it contained lead and that I should wash my hands after handling it.
I didn't.