Bullseye is getting some heat.
http://m.portlandmercury.com/Blogtow...gh-state-finds
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Bullseye is getting some heat.
http://m.portlandmercury.com/Blogtow...gh-state-finds
Not good. This is one of the reasons why Schott moved a lot of their glass manufacturing back to Germany and why Corning shut down it's large-scale plant. For them, it was arsenic, barium, and lead.
Heavy metals are a bitch on the environment and the body. I forsee some regulatory changes coming in Oregon.
Look out fuming here we come...
What does fuming have to do with heavy metals? Why would you feel the need to add that comment to this thread? Do you have something to day or do you just have a need muddy the water everywhere?
Uh-oh, that sounds like a shit-storm in the making for Bullseye, even if they were technically in compliance with gov't regs. I hope they survive the fallout. (No pun intended.) Flat glass users had better stock up on the red, orange, yellow color range right now. There's no question that Mike is right about regulation changes coming to Oregon soon.
So, do they have more lax rules in Germany? Or just better/different manufacturing processes, therefore, less impact on the environment?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike_Aurelius
I appreciate your attempts to insult me. Sometimes i get a little carried away.Quote:
Originally Posted by somewhere
I was saying if all the color companies in the US dried up and everyone had to go back to fuming exclusively. I realize that bullseye isn't boro(i think) but was just being extreme. My apologies if i muddied up your water.
Both. At one time, Corning moved everything to Brazil, where there are no rules of any kind. That plant closed about 10 years ago (?) and all manufacturing of optical blanks is now done in France. Fiber optic glass and other specialty glass is still made in NY.Quote:
Originally Posted by shawnette
Wow. Just wow.
I can't believe it took 3 years to find the "source" of the cadmium pollution.
Bullseye melting glass for over 40years. Soil tests are going to be wild.
I still wish I had more info about what WE all get exposed to.
Most of us melting these chemicals on the daily.
This brings up a question I posted in another thread which no one ever answered. When reading the older GA literature (ca. 2003) I saw they talk about wearing a HEPA mask when working with many of their colors. When I came across the newer GA literature (ca. 2007) they only mentioned HEPA once, when talking about silver. Given that the 2003 literature had numerous references to wearing a HEPA mask with many of their colors, I was curious as to what changed during those four years.Quote:
Originally Posted by BoRo
Does anyone know?
*Hopes for huge Borosilicate facility to move to New Mexico where we don't care about pollution!
muddy water lolzQuote:
Originally Posted by LooseSeal Baller
This a big deal in a way but just about any form of manufacturing puts out fumes,unseen particulate or chemical material waste. They just happen to find this.
If testing was wide spread they would find every auto shop, paint shop, machine shop, foundry is loaded with foul elements that would virtual shut down a large number of industries.
My point is if you dig deep enough you can find toxins just about everywhere. Will live in a big toxic waste dump.
^ I wholeheartedly agree snoop. Are you the snoop from ashville that worked with fat mike and friends?
pretty much. doesn't look like there's much they can do about it other than some articles like this, either.Quote:
Originally Posted by snoopdog6502
my best guess would be that color was still a pretty new territory in 2003. just a guess though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneiros
Quote:
Originally Posted by snoopdog6502
There are different degrees of toxicity. It's unlikely you'll find many auto or machine shops pumping much arsenic and cadmium into the air.
Nope, but they do occasionally get fined for just dumping used fluids where they shouldn't be.Quote:
Originally Posted by brads
My understanding is that you are sold glass that (legally) is physically not able to off gas because it is not molten. It is your discretion to heat it up and release the constituent colorants into the air. The warnings are only necessary on frits and powders because the state they are sold in can produce particulates in the air so respiratory warnings are necessary.
I could understand that...
I went back and re-read and all the instances state:
"[This color] is heavily saturated with silver and can have silver wire running through it. Treat this color as you would treat fuming. In addition to ventilation you should use a shield or HEPA respirator."
Does anyone wear a respirator while fuming? I mentioned this to a couple of older flameworkers and one of them just laughed and said if you have adequate ventilation there's no need for HEPA.
pretty sure the advanced consensus on this forum is that silver and gold fumes are much more harmless than some other things in color, such as cadmium.
Agreed
Yeah, cadmium is definitely near the top of the list of glass ingredients that can harm you. It is doubly troublesome because it volatilizes very easily. Arsenic has a similar problem, being that it is both quite toxic and very volatile in a glass melt. These are certainly two of the most problematic ingredients as far as air pollution goes when melting glass.Quote:
Originally Posted by hashmasta-kut
Forgot to add this link when I originally posted. Thought it might be both interesting and potentially helpful.
I had a pro come over to the shop to give advice on a new fan/ hood / make up air set up. Smoke bomb was very interesting. Anyway he came with a Silver Metal Safety Data Sheet that was full of information. As far as I know these should be available for any colors as well from the manufacturers. May be interesting to compare how bad or not so bad some colors are. Has anyone researched these Safety Data Sheets before?Quote:
Originally Posted by brads
Worse, they condemn the site from oils and solvents leaching into groundwater, haul off a few hundred tons of soil and fine the employer $2,000,000.00. It happened at A place I worked was moved for the new Us Army Corp of Engineers building site.Quote:
Originally Posted by brads
The toxins will vary, place to place. you could test storm drains find any and all crud that gets washed into them. Much of the airborne stuff will end up in the water sooner or later.
Iv had EPA come around workplaces and find traces of solvents and cutting oils from products just sitting outside that get rained on, seriously nasty stuff for the environment.
My point being is you can find toxins everywhere is you look. It would be great if every precaution was taken to minimize detrimental impact.
Even something as theoretically inert as farming, chemicals used end up in our water and food. :(
Im a green tree hugger but not to an unrealistic extreme though.
As far as I can see, your point is still pointless in the context of this thread about Bullseye's troubles with arsenic and cadmium in the air near their facility.Quote:
Originally Posted by snoopdog6502
Glass manufacturer Material Safety Data Sheets are typically pretty generalized, rather than being specifically geared towards each separate color. Here's an example of one from Reichenbach.Quote:
Originally Posted by Danbo
Just got this email from Uroboros, also located in Portland:
Awesome news! I'd be pretty upset if they ended up shutting down from the backlash. It's also good to know that there are definitely safer processes.Quote:
Dear Uroboros Friends,
As some of you have likely already heard on TV news, the Portland Mercury, or your Facebook feed, DEQ testing around Bullseye Glass last fall has documented considerable levels of Arsenic and Cadmium in the air and mossy plants in their neighborhood. This neighborhood includes two schools. There is deep concern in our community about these findings. Since we are also in the colored glass making business, it’s natural that you’ll want to know about Uroboros too. We feel it is important to inform you about our business practices and be completely transparent. Making art glass is a passion of ours, but we place a higher value on the health and safety of our environment, employees, customers, and neighbors. Here are the facts:
- We haven’t used Arsenic at Uroboros in over 20 years. None of our products contain Arsenic.
- We do use Cadmium for many of our Yellow, Orange and Red colors, but we don’t use it in the raw chemical form. We obtain it from a smelted glassified material, so there is no dust release during handling or charging. We use this source precisely because it decreases the release of Cadmium when handling or melting it.
- In 2009, DEQ placed two air quality monitors for 13 weeks on the Harriett Tubman school grounds about 3 blocks and across the freeway from us, as part of a state-wide testing project, and discovered Cadmium in their samples. Average reading for the two monitors over this period was 6.5 ng/M3. DEQ staff contacted all companies in our neighborhood to try to determine the source. Although we melted Cadmium containing colors on some of the days they had positive readings, there were many days in which Cadmium was detected on the school grounds during which we did not melt any Cadmium containing colors at all. We learned later that the DEQ was unable to identify a source of the Cadium at the school.
- We at Uroboros strive to minimize the environmental impact of our glass production activities in many areas. In fact, we were qualified as a 'Green Company' by the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability in 2011, and earned Portland's Sustainability at Work Silver Certification in 2012.
- We urge all users of colored glass to pay attention to safety, whether it from risks of cuts, particles in the eye, or exposure to dusts. Work in a well ventilated area and use dust masks when handling glass powders of any color, since most of the colorants are hazardous if ingested. You can read more about material safety for our glass products here.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email us at sales@uroboros.com, with ‘Safety Concerns’ as the subject line. We will answer you as best we can.
Best Regards,
Eric Lovell
President
Thanks for that update Shawnette. I also hope that both companies can weather the storm.
I think they will. The people at BE are good people. They'll figure it out and make the needed corrections.Quote:
Originally Posted by glassdocnc
Thanks for posting that Shawnette, especially the link to the Uroboros MSDS. Breaking it down into color categories is much more informative than the generalized Reichenbach MSDS from Olympic Color that I posted.Quote:
Originally Posted by shawnette
Porta potties at raves
Bullseye suspended use of cadmium and arsenic as of 3 February.
http://www.bullseyeglass.com/news-releases.html
" ...
We have engaged an environmental consulting firm to help us evaluate the data and conduct further testing and monitoring. Based on what we learn, although we are in full compliance with our air permit, Bullseye will take additional action based on any new findings that show corrective action is warranted.
While the DEQ has not required any action on our part, we decided to take action on our own. As of yesterday we suspended the use of cadmium and arsenic.
The owners and employees of Bullseye Glass care about the environment and our neighborhood and take this matter seriously."
To the people worried about the various heavy metals in our glass (boro or soda-lime) our glass comes to us pre-glassified. In the case of cadmium colors there IS a slight risk of off-gassing small amounts when you over heat the color, but the volumes most of us work with are insignificant in terms of human health risks (cigarettes contain a significant amount of cadmium).
The problem here is with large industrial scale BATCHING of glass from raw chemicals. The various forms of cadmium they use will generally reduce and vaporize as they melt, and until they're chemically bonded in solution with the glass can come out at surprising amounts. Consider that 1000kg of batch can produce as little as 400kg of raw glass depending on the type of glass you're making, the rest of that weight is gasses, water, and chemical vapor discharges. I don't know what the yield is for bullseye / Soda lime (Skye? Anyone?) but it's not 1:1 by a long shot, guessing around 85-90%.
On the torch, once our glass is formed, we lose VERY little to off-gassing, I'd bet less than 0.001%, which if a cadmium color is say, 6% cadmium by weight, 1000kg of cadmium rod would produce MAYBE 1kg total of gasses, of which the majority will be not cadmium... maybe a few grams of cadmium, which if you use 1000kg of cadmium color in say, a week, you might want to get checked out by someone who knows more about it.
Also, it WILL make the glass cost more, but a quality bag house filtration system, with wet columns and various other things, could reduce bullseyes emissions to almost 0, which if there's demand at the associated cost, they will likely do.
So are the boro manufactures in portland shaking in their little space boots right now or what? Have they been visited by the deq as well?
They talked about the bag house in use at bullseye in the o.p. Link.Quote:
Also, it WILL make the glass cost more, but a quality bag house filtration system, with wet columns and various other things, could reduce bullseyes emissions to almost 0, which if there's demand at the associated cost, they will likely do.
That's a decent guess. A typical soda-lime batch undergoes a roughly 15-20% reduction of weight as it melts (called LOI, for Loss On Ignition), the exact amount depending on the batch recipe and melting conditions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Greymatter Glass
As far as what may or may not get vaporized in a torch flame, I wouldn't discount the ability of either cadmium or arsenic to be liberated on a torch. Both are still pretty volatile at high temperatures, even when already "glassified". So make sure to use good ventilation. (Which is good advice, no matter what.)
As I said in my earlier post, if you or anyone else you know uses a lot of Bullseye red/orange/yellow glasses, now's the time to stock up. If they've suspended the use of cadmium and arsenic, those colors may get scarce for a while - at least until they come up with a pollution solution.
Just found this link. Unfortunately, it looks like Bullseye may have more bullshit to deal with in the near future due to local politics.
Expect the story to get more and more sensationalized in the near future. Here's another article I just found. Note the assertion
"A former Bullseye employee—who didn’t want to be named, but whose employment the Mercury has confirmed with past pay stubs—says the dust was considered so dangerous that employees who worked at Bullseye were forbidden to grow facial hair, to ensure a tight fit for the respirators they were required to wear. Anyone walking through that area even briefly was outfitted with a respirator, the former employee said. Yet that didn't stop Bullseye from blowing the powder to the roof one or more times per week."
Guess what. Standard respirators don't work correctly if you have a beard, glass dust or not. So Bullseye making sure that no one needing a respirator had a beard is actually a good thing. I don't envy what they are going to be dealing with in the press. Anyone with an axe to grind or a story to sell will likely be teeing off on them, facts or not.
(And on a totally unrelated subject, by coincidence I happen to know the Alfred U glass professor they quoted in the second story. Alex was one of my best local customers when I had my shop in NY. She used to buy my paperweights as gifts for her grad students. Small world, lol.)
What types of colors have arsenic in them? I heard pink slyme is heavy in arsenic but dont know many others. I wonder if any glassworkers ever get tested for heavy metals in the their system.
Nearly any color can have arsenic in it because it can be used as a fining agent. I can't speak to low expansion boro, but in soft glass the opaque glasses known as "enamel colors" typically contain arsenic. Arsenic and lead together make the best dense white enamel color. Many other opaque colors use that as a starting point and simply include additional colorants.
Here's a copy of a white enamel recipe from the 1907 book "Recipes for Flint Glass Making". The lead would be in there anyway, since the recipes are for lead (flint) glasses. The 4 1/2 lbs of arsenic in this is what causes the lead glass to become a dense opaque white.
Attachment 81787
Arsenic can also be used in cadmium-selenium colors to help with oxidation/reduction reactions.