Poison in old amps?

[Richie]

some of the old tweed fender amps had a piece of asbestos on the back panel. Bought out a old TV shop of tubes, and had one tube that was in a [labeled]radio active can.

[drhulsey]

... The population has not suffered as far as I know. But, I've been told it stays at 999 cause every time a gal gets pregnant another guy leaves town...

Reminds me of a campy movie Population 436 where the town population stays at 436 even if some body has to die to keep it constant. If any body tries to leave, they die. Something about a covenant with God.
As with most environmental exposures, duration of exposure plays a significant role. If you solder something once a week, you're not at as much risk as someone who does it every day.
If the lead, PCB, asbestos, radioactivity, etc., don't get you, the bus you didn't see coming down the street will
Life is, after all, a terminal condition

[Alexo]

As for solder fumes, I've built a mini fume hood that has serious negative pressure. You can solder under it with your face almost down in your work and smoke and fumes don't linger...

I'd like to hear more about this. How'd you build it?

Hi Benoit,

I used an inline blower which is attached to a homemade hood via some flexible ducting (think aluminum dryer-type ducting) which hangs above my little work area. You can find suitable blowers online for ventilating basements or boosting airflow in HVAC ducting. I have a light in the hood so that the work area below is illuminated from directly overhead. I can move the hood up and down to suit my needs as it is on little adjustable yo-yos that stay put (you can raise or lower the hood by tugging down on it or pushing it up). The blower pulls air from the hood (and the surrounding area) and exhausts it out to the attic airspace above. I have a rheostat on the blower but generally keep it wide open. Using a smoke test such as from a snuffed candle, it really pulls all of the air out of the area very quickly; nothing lingers. Solder smoke is pulled up and away from where I work so I'm always in clean, incoming air.

Well done. I've got a Weller solder fume filter, and I must say that I hate the damn thing. It's very noisy and only has enough suction if it's balanced about 4 to 6 inches from the fume source. However, they do sell replacement filters, which are OSHA approved for solder fumes and might be a good thing to work into a DIY air filter.

[Cygnus X1]

Colossal, that does sound like a great setup.
My work area is the back wall of the garage, so it would be easy for me to set something like that up.

Getting older and blinder-my swing away setup is a large magnifying light. It has one of those politically correct CFL bulbs in it-excellent light and doesn't heat up. It would be perfect to route a vacuum into it that fixture.

I also think of it as eye protection.
I never have a problem with solder splatter, but if it happens, it will hit the glass, and not me!

[Structo]

Just don't wear shorts when soldering.......don't ask me how I know.

Speaking of asbestos, I am a journeyman plasterer and back in the mid 70's and even more recently than that I have had to work in boiler rooms where all the pipes are wrapped in asbestos.
You would have to crawl around up, over and under this stuff stirring up the dust.

They outlawed the use of it around 1979 I believe.
But distributors were allowed to sell whatever was stocked or already in products until they had sold all of it.

You know that bumpy popcorn acoustic ceiling you see on houses built in the late 60's and 70's?
Loaded with asbestos.
I used the scrape that off for people for side work and then hand texture the ceiling.

The first few times I did it I just scraped it off dry.
Then I found if I wetted it, it came off a lot nicer, and unbeknownst to me, that kept the asbestos dust down.

Also a lot of the old time plaster had it in it to improve it's characteristics.

We used to dump handfuls of the bulk asbestos into stucco cement as it mixed.
It makes it fluff up better and improves the workability.....

Well by 1980 we didn't do that anymore, but my goose is probably cooked from it.
We had a training film in a safety meeting one time and they said it can take up to 30 years before you show any symptoms from it......
There are several different strains of asbestos, some worse than others.
When it enters your lungs, it never leaves.

We never wore particle or dust masks then because nobody ever told us it was dangerous!

Now you see these asbestos abatement guys that remove asbestos from buildings dressed up in space suits with an air supply.

The other thing I probably have breathed too much of is silica dust.

We use the white silica sand in a lot of plaster mixes.

Pretty hard not to breath when you are dumping a 100 lb. sack of sand in the mixer.

I will probably regret all that stuff in a few years.........

Sorry for rambling on.