Aluminium Dust Health Concerns? Do you sand before painting?

[steveyraff]

Hey guys,

I had a grandparent who I had the very depressing experience of watching suffer a slow death from Alzheimers. Its a horrible disease. I recall when my family was dealing with this, we were researching the disease, and I often heard of a hypothesised link between Alzheimers/Dementia and Aluminium. This can include natural amounts of aluminium in the soil, water, or via cooking and eating utensils (pots and pans etc).

I've become really worried about this lately. I am always building pedal, pretty much every week I've another new build on the go. My work bench outside where I drill and sand my cases is all silver and grey from aluminium dust. It gets everywhere. When I sand, buff or drill, I usually wear a little mask, but I don't think it'd do much good. The stuff is all over the place and in the air, my hands be silver/grey after it.

Worse again, my soldering station where I build the pedals themselves is in my bedroom. I sometimes use a little rat-tail file to adjust drill holes etc. Every week or so when I tidy, I sweep the floor around my feet and there is always a little mound of silver grey aluminium dust. Same goes for my desk in my bedroom after a build, and I wipe it down.

Does anyone else worry about this sort of thing? Its actually really freaking me out the more I think about it. It seems even if you take all precautions, it'd be nearly impossible to avoid having it in the air. I was ready some scientific articles on studies carried out to investigate the link, but none of them ever turned up 100% conclusive. There was a slight increase in mortality from alzheimers in some Aluminium mine workers etc.

Anyway, just wondering what other peoples thoughts are.

One question - I think it'd cut down A LOT on the amount of aluminium dust I produce, if I did not sand and buff my aluminium cases. I always have done this because I had read that paint will not stick to the surface correctly if you don't. Does anyone else here not bother sanding and just spray right over the unfinished aluminium casing with Primer and paint???

[GibsonGM]

I think you're sanding too much! 

I wouldn't get too worried about the need for 'buffing' the surface, man....just clean it with something to degrease, then prime and paint!   

No harm in giving it a go-over with some steel wool or something, but a primer meant for aluminum is probably going to do just as well...an "etching primer".  At least in my experience, I have not had adhesion problems because I didn't clean the crap out of the enclosure.

You're right to be concerned about inhaling Al dust, I would be too.   Maybe do the holes and things in the workshop/outside, dust it off, then bring it inside.  The stuff's not plutonium, but you do want to minimize ANY inhalation of metals etc.    Dermal absorption is probably a very minimal threat, but why not minimize that too, if we can?  Only takes a second.    You could even wear rubber kitchen gloves when making holes, grinding, etc.   I never worry if just doing 2, 3 holes and done, but if I am doing this all the time, I'd make a plan.

It takes a better respirator than a 'paper mask' to filter out tiny particles...something HEPA-based, or at least a painter's mask made for lead paint work ($15 US).   

[Phoenix]

I think your concerns regarding Alzheimer's disease are largely unfounded. While medical research has shown that AD sufferers do show an increase in aluminium in the brain as the disease progresses, no correlation with environmental exposure has been shown. The current most accepted theory by the medical community at large is that this is due to some mechanism of the disease, retaining more aluminium salts in the body, and not actually the cause. Remember that correlation does not equal causation.
Of course there is still some research into aluminium as a potential risk factor, but there are many other well established risk factors which have a much larger impact on the likelyhood of developing the condition, such as smoking, alcoholism and obesity, so consider those risk factors first.

Of course, that is not to say that you should be breathing aluminium dust - breathing any particulate matter is dangerous, and the diecast aluminium enclosures we normally work with are made from castable aluminium alloys with a significant proportion of silicon in the mix, which is particularly bad for your lungs. So definitely make sure to use personal protective equipment.

[mac]

Any dust, fume, metal, etc, in excess in your lungs is bad. Always use something to cover your nose.

I had a grandparent who I had the very depressing experience of watching suffer a slow death from Alzheimers. Its a horrible disease. I recall when my family was dealing with this, we were researching the disease, and I often heard of a hypothesised link between Alzheimers/Dementia and Aluminium. This can include natural amounts of aluminium in the soil, water, or via cooking and eating utensils (pots and pans etc).

Mercury amalgams in your mouth helps AD, among others.
Hot meals, flourine, vinegar, etc, evaporate tiny dosis that go to the intestines and lungs, and from there to the liver, kidneys, brain, etc.
Symptoms list is too long.
Removal must be made with extreme care.
Banned in many european countries, still in use in many others.
One of the biggest crimes of the last century.

mac

[R.G.]

One fallout of the environmental awareness movement has been the co-opting of any possible micro-contaminant into a feed-source for making people afraid of just about anything, and therefore amenable to political persuasion and control.

The internet seems to have aided this in that it makes any new hysteria spread at nearly the speed of light. It's sad.

What is missing from all of the enviro-hysteria is any realistic sense of proportion. Aluminum is the third-most-common element in the earth's crust, after oxygen and silicon, and the most abundant metal, ahead of iron. A remarkably large amount of the things you touch have aluminum in them. So much for avoiding aluminum. You can't. As noted, the aluminum-pots-cause-Alzheimers panic has been largely debunked. It's a symptom, not a cause.

Mercury dangers are real. However, the amount of mercury from dental fillings has been evaluated in detail, and it's significantly less than other environmental sources of mercury, and is in the form of mercury vapor, which is harder (althought not impossible) for your body to absorb. The mercury you get from eating fish is in the form of methyl mercury, and is easily absorbed, and quite dangerous for causing mercury poisoning. You also get mercury vapor from breathing air anywhere around a power plant that's not a nuclear, hydroelectric, or wind generator.

The question is HOW MUCH, WHAT KIND, and DOES IT REALLY HURT YOU THE WAY THE FANATICS SAY IT DOES?

Go look things up. If there is a political movement or suggestion involved in the places you look for number, chances are you're being manipulated for someone else's purposes. Get your numbers from someone likely not to be grinding a political agenda - if you can find one. YOU CANNOT TRUST ANY ADVICE, NUMBERS, OR "FACTS" FROM A POLITICALLY MOTIVATED SOURCE.

And a build-it-yourself pedals forum isn't likely to be an impartial, detailed, and well-studied source for health infomation. Get some perspective. Here's a place that seems to be mostly politics-free: http://www.nsc.org/learn/safety-knowledge/Pages/injury-facts-chart.aspx The odds of dying from the sum of all toxic substances is one in 96. That's just slightly more likely than dying in a car crash (1 in 114), from a fall (1 in 127). Note that both aluminum and mercury are just two of the many possible toxic substances.

That being said, dust of any kind in your lungs will damage them. Paint solvents from spray painting are a known toxic substance as well and many of them are skin penetrants. Do the smart thing - use personal protective gear. You can get cheap and effective breathing filters, face shields, and vinyl/latex/nitrile gloves at most hardware stores and especially at Harbor Freight. Don't breath sanding dust, including that of many hardwoods, which HAVE been proven chemically toxic, don't inhale paint vapor. Paint outdoors if possible. Use shielding gloves. Don't get that stuff in your eyes.

And read up on what's really dangerous, and what the risks really are.

[GibsonGM]

Like I said...don't inhale it.  Use the proper respirator.  Ventilate when you paint.  Don't let paint thinner or solvents sit on your hands.

I'm not just a house painter....I'm an environmental scientist (I was, before the political aspects of the job made me hate it to the point where I moved to the woods and became a house painter).  Just what R.G. states above...mass hysteria made me complicit in taking a LOT of money from a lot of people over knee-jerk problems.  It didn't have to be that way.

Thinking about what you're exposing yourself to is great.  Asking for advice is, too.  There is a lot of info available out there about how to mitigate risks from exposure to various compounds, chemicals and such....the internet is your friend in this   

[steveyraff]

Cheers for the replies.

In regards to R.G's post - I am very aware that a DIY pedal building forum is far from the best place to ask for advice on the correlation between working with aluminium and AD   

I have been reading a lot about it in whatever non-biased scientific studies I have found published online. I just thought it would be worthwhile asking in a forum that shares a mutual activity which is the basis of my worry - just so maybe I can get an insight if anyone else here takes precautions that hadn't yet came to mind.

Anyway, cheers dudes.

[GibsonGM]

It was a good question, man!  Hope you got enough info to feel ok doing what you're doing...

[samhay]

Have you considered wet sanding your enclosures?
Much less dust and generally a better result too.

[steveyraff]

Have you considered wet sanding your enclosures?
Much less dust and generally a better result too.

Ah - now that is a great suggestion. I never thought of that!

[LiLFX]

I was sanding enclosures and ended up with a nosebleed so bad that even after pinching my nose for 20 minutes it ran like a faucet. I passed out and my wife called an ambulance. I wear a mask now because a $3k ER visit ain't worth it.

[R.G.]

That's a good reason to wear a mask.

I"m curious - did the medicos say that the dust from sanding ...caused... the nosebleed, or was it something else?

I would be really, really concerned that unless there was a clear cause and effect, a medical determination that snading dust directly caused your nosebleed, that you may be taking good general precautions (the mask) but not protecting yourself against the real cause.

If the medical determination was that the sanding dust absolutely caused the bleed, good, you're covered. But if the dust didn't cause it, and you just were coincidentally sanding when the bleed started, you're still at risk even with the masks.

You see the difference of course. Humans really want to believe that simultaneity implies causation so much that this logical fallacy is given a formal name, the fallacy that correlation  proves causation (post hoc ergo propter hoc).

The reason this caught my attention is that for most of my life up through my mid 30s, I was plagued by random nosebleeds. As an example, I was taking a final exam in college, bent over the copied pages of the test, when my nose opened up with a couple of drops of blood on the test. I got up, handed the exam - with blood - to the prof, and said "I'll be back in a minute" and went off to the washroom to staunch the flow. I returned with paper towels to blot the test, sat back down, and completed it. It was only after I got my upper respiratory allergies under control in my 30s that the irritation to my sinuses stopped doing this.

So knowing the exact cause is important. I hope you have it nailed, and dust masks do it. But some enlightened suspicion is always good.

[PRR]

> I was taking a final exam... .... ... when my nose opened up

I KNEW IT!! Exams cause illness!
__________________________

> all silver and grey from aluminium dust

How do you know it is Aluminum?

It surely is not pure Aluminum; that is too soft. All "Aluminum" is alloy, other metals added for hardness, strength, and moldability (and cheapness).

Zinc is a popular "white metal" which is sometimes blended into Aluminum. I was just reading a 1913 report. The John Deere factory tapped a deep-water well into their piping. Workers were getting sick in large numbers. Tests showed the water was eating the galvanizing (Zinc) on the pipes and making Zinc compounds (Zinc sulphide suspected). They had to flood the whole plumbing with acid to eat-off the galvanize, then flush VERY well (and test), then start planning to replace all pipes before the iron rotted through.
https://s12.postimg.org/nbodn3k4t/Deere-1913.gif
You won't get sick that way from stomp-boxes; just shows that some odd things happen.

[chuckd666]

$3k ER...  ya poor Americans.

[GiovannyS10]

You really made me worried now. Like i say every time i buff my enclosures as well. I use a lot of sandpapers and after prime, and sandpaper again... Wow! My life is full of aluminium powder that i use in metallic paints and for do conductive paint too. And i not use mask '-' I have not one, i just sandpaper it without a mask.  Maybe is too late for start to use it now?

About your question:
When i started to use 1590 series enclosure i just sprayed paint above it... But was not a good result and during the time the paint starts to crumble. So i started to buffer it using sandpaper - very better results... Now i use sandpaper #60 > #80 > #180 > #220 for buff a single pedal. And when i started to spray prime before paint the result really was what i wanted. But i really build things a lot of time without a mask and never had problems with it.

Kids - do not try it in your home!

[bluebunny]

I can't offer any advice or data on the perils (or otherwise) of inhaling or ingesting aluminium, but on a slightly lighter note, I have pretty much always done the very minimum* of prep on my enclosures and never had problems with my paint jobs.

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* Like, none at all!

[GiovannyS10]

I can't offer any advice or data on the perils (or otherwise) of inhaling or ingesting aluminium, but on a slightly lighter note, I have pretty much always done the very minimum* of prep on my enclosures and never had problems with my paint jobs.

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* Like, none at all!

Yeah Marc! I unfortunately not inherited your painting skills! I just have to wait time until develop the perfect painting formula. Maybe because i live very close to the sea, my pedal's paint just cracks after one month... Now it not happens. Tomorrow i will send you some pics of rusty pedals and paint cracking..

[steveyraff]

I'd be more than happy to not sand at all - I hate that entire process. I just sand with medium coarse paper once (forget the exact grain), then I go over it with plastic wool pads to buffer it out. I do get carried away and keep going until I have a shiny surface. Then I spray over primer then appliance gloss white.

I sell most of my pedals on so I don't really want to deal with people wanting to return them because of crumbling paint. I wonder if I could get away with wet sanding, and actually sanding less in general while I'm at it. I usually wear a cheap mask while doing it out in the garage - but one thing I'm going to change for sure is filing at the work desk in my bedroom. Thats where I build my pedals and occasionally use a rat tail file if I've erroneously drilled a hole too small. That sort of dust in the bedroom is probably both the easiest avoided and least healthy.

Ain't easy being a hypochondriac folks! lol. I also started a thread about inhaling solder fumes a while back  ! ! ! 

[R.G.]

Filing in general produces no dust small enough to be airborne, so it's not the same health issue that sanding dust is. Probably you shouldn't mix filings with your cooking or coffee, but other than that, it's not nearly the same degree of dangerous. It's more a housekeeping issue.

Filing aluminum and most of its alloys is a problem to the health of the files. Many aluminum alloys are so soft they're "gummy" in the parlance of machinists and little particles of aluminum stick under the teeth of the file, a process called "pinning". Unless these are removed regularly, they foul the file and make gouges in the surface being filed. Rubbing hard chalk into the file teeth before filing works wonders to lessen pinning.