I doubt this has been posted, but I know we have a lot of folks here who do their own welding, so read this. Kind of an eye opener too


Brake Cleaner = Phosgene Article

 

Damn Chuck, I had no idea that brake cleaner could ***** you up so bad.

What really comes to mind is when I was younger and more stupid I would take cans of solvents and cleaner and spray them on a lighter to make a mini flame thrower.

I could have really screwed the pooch.

 

Wow,
Your right, talk about eye opener. I know I am going to be more careful

 

Wow.

 

huh... who knew? def makes me reconsider alot of welds.

 

Thats scary!

I, too, found out the hard way when thigns combine they dont do good things to you:

Had pulled off my interior dome light and was trying to fix a broken part in it near the fake chrome in tehre - so I used some superglue and dabbed some oin there holding it close with my fingers and trying to look through a littl eopening to make sure it was holding.. little did I know - one of the solvents in the Superglue has an insane reaction with the fake chrome paint in those things and it started producing a smoke of sorts that made my eyes burn like a son of a gun for a few minutes and I had to leave the room and go outside to get some fresh air.. Every time I got close to it the same thign started happening.. it stopped several hours later - I checked and it was glued properly, so heck.. stuck it back in and it has worked since - just a warning to the general populace in case this happens to you too!

 

That's crazy...

 

yeah as a kid we used to use brake cleaner and every other flamable thing in the garage as a torch. though I havn't ever though about welding after spraying it on metal. but now I know I dont want to

 

Holy crap. I use brake clean all the time while welding. Im scarred ****less now....

 

not to mention the can could have exploded in your hand...

 

thats so crazy i never knew that but thats just one more thing to add to my dont do list


so far i have :
dont sleep with dirty hookers
and dont spray cleaner on stuff im about to weld

:)

 

Good to know, thanks for posting that.

 

I have never seen this happen and question if it could really happen....

 

nice, when you weld you run into all kinds of solvents that put off some serious odors.

 

kool thanks for the heads up

 

I added a bit to the title of this thread to emphasize the importance. I know we have a lot of people here who weld and I'd like to not see anyone here die.

Phosgene is one of those chemicals we uses as "oh crap" examples in HazMat training at the FD. As little as 50ppm can be rapidly lethal. You absolutely can not mess around with that stuff. It used to be used a chemical weapon if that puts things in perspective. If you even think you got a whiff of that stuff, you need to get out of the effected area and get emergency medical treatment immidiately.

Spraying it into lighter like we all did as kids (and some probably still do...) will not cause that kind of reaction. But when you hit it with a welder, its a lot hotter than a lighter and the argon gas allows it to decompose into phosgene gas.

 

I read that on Another forum. then my boss and service writer saw it.. Boss said thats the same stuff we use

scary story, when i was tacking the caps on my axle at work, i was like "woo thats hot!" refering to my junk.

i went to tack again and it didnt work, getting hotter i rip off my hood like "WTF?"

looked down and a rag i just sprayed with brake cleaner to wipe off the axle was on fire below my junk! I guess a spark hit it, not sure why i put the rag there, guess i forgot.


so yea, almost died apparently.

 

Simply being on fire will not turn brake cleaner into Phosgene. You have to hit it with something like a welder. That extreme heat combined with the argon gas is what results in the conversion to phosgene.

If your burning rag was producing phosgene gas, you would be dead.

 

Wow that's scary.

 

I know a guy who was using a can of WD-40 as a blowtorch with a friend when he was a kid. The flame started melting up the tube, they chucked it and ran, but not fast enough. He said when the thing exploded he had to pull a burning piece of can out of his friend's back (they were a mile from home).

It can happen.

 

Your friend is bs'ing you. That doesn't happen.

 

Wow, I do a little light welding projects so I have never used solvents, I normally just hit it with Flap disc. But I can easily see how something like this could happen, thanks for bringing this article to our attention I emailed it to couple friends who weld also.

 

Thats how we lit most of our fires at the dunes.

 

So I just read this again and WTF???

This guy inhales this crap. Has a seizure and has chest pain, kidney pain and all these symptoms that ussually mean bad things, and he waits NINE DAYS to go to the ER? What a dumbass.

 

The brake clean we used to use at work had the warning of death on the label so we never mess around with that stuff. Too many people just use something without reeading first, hopefully what this guy went through will make more people stop and read before they just grab something and start using it.