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Old 2015-08-27, 11:59am
JimW JimW is offline
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Join Date: Jul 14, 2014
Posts: 20
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Not at all contradictory.

I'm not telling anyone what to do and if you work in a closed room, you MUST have ventilation.

In fact, Just to be clear:
NIOSH recommends local ventilation for combustion products. Period.

I'm not trying to downplay safety but you have to deal with facts and actual safety concerns.

What I'm saying is that, according to experts in the field, people who are so safety conscious that they recommend hot gloves to work with kilns (and who does this?) the hazards you are exposed to while making glass beads are below the occupational exposure limits, with the possible exception of UV and IR exposure, especially with boro.
I also want to point out they mention luminanace levels being highest when working with 24-carat gold. So they were working with metals and there was no detectable metals in the air. Good to know.
Thus, high capacity ventilation is not necessary.

And now, after educating myself on the actual hazards produced by this hobby during the torching process I plan on greatly reducing the airflow of my funnels.
I'm keeping them, but all I want is a very gentle, you can't even hear it, suction to pull out some of the CO and the tiny bit of NO produced. My flame shoots straight into the vacuum opening and it will carry away the gases.

That's my overall point.
Educate yourself to the hazards you face and take appropriate precautions.
Bigger is better, better safe than sorry, etc is when you have no idea what you're dealing with.
Thanks to this work, we know exactly what to protect ourselves from and can make intelligent, informed safety decisions. Based on measurement and science.

MOST IMPORTANT!!!!.... DO WHAT YOU FEEL IS NECESSARY TO BE SAFE!
DON"T LISTEN TO ME, I"M NOT AN EXPERT ON LAMPWORK HAZARDS.
I'm relying on the advise of experts. That's my choice.
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