Not unusual, i did oil paints and often some types are made with chemicals that are harmful to some degree, plus there’s the paint thinners and whatnot that are bad for you. I later got in graphic design in college where we used contact cement, which is also really harmful and was used in poorly ventilated areas. Later still i took a polyclay sculpting class and we used a chemical to soften the polyclay which is also quite bad healthwise to handle with your bare hands over long repeated exposure.
I’m glad i didn’t stick with it all though i do miss it
I also have a story someone told me about a college or university where someone from facilities was supposed to clean the ventilation. It was super dusty and they used some kind of brush to push all the dust but forgot to collect it so this mound of old dusty moldy pile ended up above a particular teacher’s office. The teacher got sicker and sicker over a few years until they caught a flesh eating disease, this freaked out the university and they checked the ventilation system and discovered the reason.
The dangers of grinding abalone, muscles and other shells has been known for a long time, This isn’t strictly a pollution issue, grinding and breathing shell dust will mess you up. This isn’t knew information but clearly needs to be more widely spread.
Often shells are cut while under water to prevent dust being kicked into the air.
i’ve never understood huffing. with all the ways to get high some people intentionally inhale stuff like this with almost always very bad health effects. no i do not want the inside of my lungs scotchguarded, i need to breath thanks. feel sorry for the people who walk down that road.
I’d be curious to know if there’s a second, distinct, problem arising from sensitization to the assortment of proteins and polysaccharides and things that make up the non-mineral portion of a mussel shell.
I don’t know if you can get an immune response to that stuff going(shell grinding doesn’t seem to be common enough to have a gruesome occupational hazard literature); but, if it is possible, inhaling fine dust laden with xeno proteins over an extended period is probably a fantastic way of doing so.
Such an immune response would be less likely to keep killing you after you walked away; but much more likely to be vividly noticeable in the very short term.
There is something wrong about this story. She either didn’t have a proper vacuum system or she didn’t use it correctly.
I grind steel, cast iron, and carbide for a living, ten hours a day. Been doing it for over 25 years. I am not alone in this. There’s a vacuum and it collects the resultant dust. I’ve worked at several shops and there is always a vacuum system.
This unfortunate woman could have inquired into how to avoid these issues. There are many options to avoid inhaling grinding dust. The idea that you would grind something for up to 12 hours at a time without proper ventilation seems plain crazy. Too bad, but ultimately she made a big error in judgement. It isn’t inevitable that grinding shells for art will kill you.
I am glad that her story is reported though. At least someone else will know enough to look into ventilation options.
She probably never thought there was a risk. Her art seems to require unusual materials and techniques, so it is unlikely that there is a large knowledge base of the dangers involved. Her work is really haunting, and the whole tale is sad.
Mrs. Dr. Stanton has treated heavy metal toxicity in some people, and finds rapid onset symptoms from dust exposure surprising, as the metals would still be enclosed in calcium, and would likely take some time to leach out. This with the caveat that the specific metals and concentrations would need to be part of any informed discussion.
I personally sometimes do lots of shell inlay in wood, which involves grinding, sanding, and sawing. I have not thought to take precautions other than basic air filtration. I plan to carefully review my safety precautions before I do any more of that.
Bangladesh has a big problem with arsenic poisoning since well-meaning aid workers helped them dig deeper wells to get fresh water that unfortunately turned out to be laced with arsenic.
I suspect that there’s actually an interesting little intersection on the graph where working with more dangerous materials actually becomes safer than working with less dangerous ones(at least in jurisdictions where you aren’t allow to treat tossing workers into the toxin smelters as a cost of doing business) because vividly alarming materials and processes make it pretty obvious that you should be careful; while something seemingly innocuous, that you sort of edge into using heavily, does not.
Unfortunately, art has a lot of that. People mostly know that if it says ‘white lead’ it might well mean it; but all sorts of cool VOCs and solvents and things; a nontrivial amount of what team pottery gets all over their hands and then subjects to high temperatures, and so on. There has been some progress in labelling since the good old days; but art materials still have a tendency to feel safer than they sometimes are; and the found-objects types obviously don’t get vendor safety labels.
“Let this serve as a warning to people who say natural materials are always better.”
This isn’t the correct conclusion to reach. The lesson to learn from this is that one must always practice proper hygiene when working any and all materials. Wear a dust mask that is appropriate for your process when cutting/grinding/burning/welding/soldering etc. and ESPECIALLY when cleaning out your ventilation system, for fuck’s sake. It’s not about “natural” or not. Apple seeds contain cyanide. It’s about basic practices. Everything and anything can be toxic especially in the long run if you don’t educate yourself and don’t take any precautions.
