3D Printers Shown To Emit Potentially Harmful Nanosized Particles 180
An anonymous reader writes "A new study by researchers in the Built Environment Research Group at the Illinois Institute of Technology shows that commercially available desktop 3D printers can have substantial emissions of potentially harmful nanosized particles in indoor air. Many desktop 3D printers rely on a process where a thermoplastic feedstock is heated, extruded through a small nozzle, and deposited onto a surface to build 3D objects. Similar processes have been shown to have significant aerosol emissions in other studies using a range of plastic feedstocks, but mostly in industrial environments. In this study, researchers measured ultrafine particle concentrations resulting from a popular commercially available desktop 3D printer using two different plastic feedstocks inside an office. Ultrafine particles (or UFPs) are small, nanosized particles less than 100 nanometers in diameter. Inhalation of UFPs may be important from a health perspective because they deposit efficiently in the lung and can even translocate to the brain. Estimates of emission rates of total UFPs in this study were high, ranging from about 20 billion particles per minute for a 3D printer utilizing a lower temperature polylactic acid (PLA) feedstock to about 200 billion particles per minute for the same type of 3D printer utilizing a higher temperature acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) feedstock. The emission rates were similar to those measured in previous studies of several other devices and indoor activities, including cooking on a gas or electric stove, burning scented candles, operating laser printers, or even burning a cigarette."
So... How worrying is this, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The emission rates were similar to those measured in previous studies of several other devices and indoor activities, including cooking on a gas or electric stove, burning scented candles, operating laser printers, or even burning a cigarette.
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The amount of emissions might be similar... I would expect the composition of those emissions to be considerably different. How many plastics would there be getting cooked on a gas or electric stove, or in a scented candle? Probably not very many...
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Soot is nasty stuff. I'd rather take my chances with PLA which degrades in the human body. It's the stuff they make self dissolving suture wire and bone screws out of.
Re:So... How worrying is this, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's cumulative, it can be very worrying. Factor in that it's not just your own activities you have to worry about, but neighbours etc, and you can see the problem. I mean, all non-smokers know how fucking vile it is having to be near smokers, and how it affects breathing for many.
yeah.. but candles & cooking? if it's similar to cooking, I'll continue to not give a shit about it. if smoking.. well I might build an exhaust - or start smoking indoors.
this study isn't about if it smells good or not though, which is pretty much the instant cigarette effect people get, so why bring that up..
(anyhow, from the study, pla seems to be 3x background for duration of the print. I'd be interested in PET plastic study too, the prints with it are a lot sturdier.. also, probably the coloring agents etc play a role, so including those would have been nice)
Re:So... How worrying is this, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
One must distinguish between similarity in particle output and similarity in particle composition!
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Burning (err, decomposing, I guess) enough teflon will kill people too. HF is nasty shit.
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What you will get is carbonyl flouride, the fluoride analogue of phosgene [wikipedia.org]. Mmmmhhhh...
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Re:So... How worrying is this, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Factor in that it's not just your own activities you have to worry about, but neighbours etc
No, you don't. You might not have noticed, but this world is chock full of floating nanoparticles. We call them "dust", "pollen", "smoke", etc. Our lungs have similarly evolved to deal with these particles. I think it is quite senseless to get up in arms over the minuscule supply of particles from your neighbor's 3D printing machine while ignoring the vast swarm of particles coming from the dust mites living on your skin and environment.
Re:So... How worrying is this, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Which means they do all sorts of nasty stuff if they are bioactive.
Wrong... try again. [wikipedia.org]
(Just incase you can't be bothered reading... the summary is that implants are made out of PLA because it degrades in such a "good" way)
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We all know what "Dust" [wikipedia.org] realy is.
Re:So... How worrying is this, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pollen can break down in our bodies, dust get's encased in mucus and expelled and smoke - well, you don't want to be inhaling too much of that at a time. As you said our bodies 'evolved' to handle most of those threats - including becoming smart enough to not expose ourselves to them. Plastic however is only about 100 years old. I'm pretty sure we haven't evolved enough since the early 1900s to develop resistance to inhaling an aerosolized version of this already toxic chemical.
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Nanoparticles are much smaller than pollen. (11.5 nm to 116 nm). At that scale, particles can be much more active than the bulk materials. And seriously, POLLEN? When people think of airborne substances that give them problems, that's very high on the list. Not to be compared in severity with coal dust, but still pretty bad.
The take home lesson is this: keep it out of your house and operate it in an area well-ventilated to the outside, or in a room with HEPA filters which MIGHT be good enough to take m
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Hey, it's something we can get hysteric about. And since everyone stopped smoking already, we need a new boogeyman.
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If those were alpha particles of helium, for example, you'd have all sorts of problems
You know what happens when you take a whiff of a bag of alpha particles? You talk funny for a few seconds. What makes alpha radiation dangerous isn't that they are alpha particles, but that they're alpha particles with lots of kinetic energy, enough to ionize any cells they happen to run into.
The fact that you would spew out words like "nanoparticles" and then completely ignore the consequences makes me think you were trying to sound smarter than you really are. Judging by your posting history, I don't blame you.
Like the "fact" that you would spew out words like "alpha particles"? I find it interesting how many people do the things of which they accuse me in the very post in which they make the accusation.
I see no evidence
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This is is the single most dangerous error in thinking when dealing with new technologies.
If it really were, then there'd be no point in listening to you since you've just described a rather meaningless error. To the contrary, when new technologies do bad things, we see those consequences.
It is the person who introduces the unnatural who needs to have the burden of proof
Like the people who make unfounded claims of unusual harm from some ambiguous thing called "nanoparticles"? That's pretty unnatural.This sort of talk reminds me of the self-contradictory "Precautionary Principle" [wikipedia.org] which, if applied to itself, would have to reject its own use.
as Nassim Taleb says in Antifragile
So let me get this right. An author o
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You know what makes alpha particles different from helium? One has electrons and the other doesn't,
For a small bit of time until the alpha particles acquire electrons, then all you have are helium atoms.
Re:So... How worrying is this, really? (Score:5, Funny)
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Or you'll start soiling your diapers earlier, effectively taking away a year of good health.
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Or you'll start soiling your diapers earlier, effectively taking away a year of good health.
Probably worse than that. Particulate-related health effects tend to concentrate either in the lungs, for obvious reasons, or the heart/major blood vessels(because suitably small particulates can enter the bloodstream through the gas-exchange surfaces of the lungs and trigger various inflammatory freakouts).
If you think pissing yourself is inconvenient and humiliating, try operating on substantially substandard oxygen supplies... Every shallow gasp giving you about half the oxygen you really want...
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There's certainly precedent; unless local weather was bad much of the time, historically in much of the world cooking was done apart from living spaces - either outside or in an alcove or courtyard. So many of today's houses and apartments really are not that well thought out, if you stop to think about it.
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Sir, may I have a word with you over there in that black van with the tinted windows?
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Something must go (Score:3)
When multiple options are available to mitigate the problem, then the most often used should be eliminated.
Hear you all, stop cooking! You're potentially killing yourself from nano-particle emissions. Stop cooking, now, please.
Re:Something must go (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that we don't know what these particular particles will do to our bodies yet, and this was something rather unanticipated with 3d printers. Ultimately more research needs to be done, and it may well turn out that these particles are harmless, but considering that we don't know much about their interactions with our biology, it's best to assume the worst until we know better.
With cooking, candles, etc., we've been doing it for so long that we can probably safely assume that the resulting particles aren't causing any significant harm.
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Soot is known to cause lots of harm because it contains carcinogens and particulate carbon.
There are several studies on the interaction of PLA particles with living tissue. PLA is a non-toxic, biocompatible, biodegradable polymer; it's almost certainly less harmful than soot.
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What's the chance those studies were funded by the companies that sell PLA? Pretty decent I would say.
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Before 3D printing came along PLA was used almost exclusively for surgical procedures...
OMG Big Pharma is involved. We're all going to die!
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It's well known that roasting and frying creates certain carcinogens. Like, say, in french fries [wikipedia.org]. Still I see rather few people going all hysteric about it and picketing fast food chains because they're selling poison to our children! Save the children!
Just because something doesn't kill you instantly doesn't mean it's safe to do it. Actually, we know a lot MORE about how frying kills us indirectly than we do about how 3D printing harms us, so I guess we should stop frying right now and continue research on
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From the summary this is only a side effect of gas and electric cooking. Everyone should switch to using open wood fireplaces. That'll stop the particles from gas and electric cooking from fouling our air.
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Can't take the chance. Just going to eat my chicken raw, just like my ancestors did before they learned to cook with fire. I imagine they must have been much healthier then since their diet was more natural and not tainted with carcinogens. How many people have died from cancer through the eons that could have been prevented by staying away from smoke and fire?
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Can't take the chance. Just going to eat my chicken raw, just like my ancestors did before they learned to cook with fire. I imagine they must have been much healthier then since their diet was more natural and not tainted with carcinogens. How many people have died from cancer through the eons that could have been prevented by staying away from smoke and fire?
"We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to NOT bang the rocks together, guys."
Strat
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My landlord and the fire department want to have a word with you concerning your great idea...
Panic inducing (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is that we're going to find nanoparticles a VERY common part of our environment, and that just about any process that grinds or sprays is going to generate nanoparticles.
Fortunately, considering that bacteria and viruses are ALSO nanoparticles, our bodies have evolved amazing defenses against them.
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well their study has the PLA result to be 3x than what the baseline is, about. the abs result seems a bit funky, why that happens would be interesting. there's likely large differences between models though too, while in principle most 3d home printers have a same kind of extrusion setup.. it's not really so.
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Well, y'know, I do keep myself in shape, but I wouldn't really call my abs anything to write home about...
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Bacteria and virus are biodegradable, plastic is not.
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Nope, but usually quite inert.
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Nope, but usually quite inert.
HAHAHAHAA
and also
BAHAHAHAHAHHAHA
Most plastics are the diametric opposite of inert. They can react with all kinds of things normally found in their environment. For example, literally all plastic bottles leach toxics into their contents, BPx-free or not, even if those contents are only water. And you happen to be mostly water.
In addition, the smaller the particle, the more chance it has to do damage. Your cilia are good at sweeping large particles, like those from wood smoke, out of your lungs. They cannot d
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They can react with all kinds of things normally found in their environment. For example, literally all plastic bottles leach toxics into their contents
Leaching is not a reaction. And you neglect that dosage is a big part of what makes "toxics" toxic.
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Not all plastics are alike. PLA is biodegradable. [wikipedia.org]
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PLA is biodegradable. [wikipedia.org]
Am I the only one sick of having to paste that link under all these "all plastics are bad" comments? :p I'm glad you beat me too this one.
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... just about any process that grinds or sprays is going to generate nanoparticles.
Hmm, must have a word with the wife
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Exactly. Asbestos is dangerous because the tiny shattered fibers are like little X-acto knife blades, forever stabbing at lung cells, popping them like tiny balloons. Eventually, one pierces a cell wall without killing the cell, the sharpened tip of the asbestos crystal slices some of that cell's DNA into random bits, and the cell replicates with that corrupt DNA. Sorry, but that cell just became ground zero for another case of mesothelioma.
Aerosolized ABS plastic? I don't know what shape those nanopart
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Absolute FUD (Score:2)
"Cooking on gas or electric stoves and electric toaster ovens was a major source of UFP, with peak personal exposures often exceeding 100,000 particles/cm and estimated emission rates in the neighborhood of 10 particles/min."
So in other words, a toaster puts out 10x more UFPs. Nothing to see here folks.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20087407 [nih.gov]
Re:Absolute FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, Like 100% of laser printers on the market, which use a polystyrene based toner powder, and are potentially much worse for you than that reprap ever dreamed of being.
Since not only does the laser printer flash heat and fuse the toner powder to the paper and release styrenes and other organic nanoparticles into the air [worksafetyhub.com.au], they also frequently leak, and pose a significant powder inhalation hazard!
In other words, if you don't find your laser printer in the file room terribly dangerous, you shouldn't find the 3d printer any more so.
Mmm, yeah, real dangerous (Score:2)
Right up there with frying food or scented candles. We'll get back to you on that, sure.
Right up there with frying food or scented candles (Score:4, Funny)
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Medical science has been saying for YEARS that frying Scented Candles is bad for your health.
Which is worse though, frying them or eating them fried? Obviously more healthy poached.
Wait...
Don't tease the participle just because it dangles. It can get some blue pills for that and then you'll be sorry!
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Boeing? My ex-girlfriend invented those at our last fight.
Guess I should have patented it.
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Also known as Dreamliners [cnn.com]
OK so what this means is... (Score:2)
They need to be enclosed and have a ionized air filter...
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I do that with all my scented candles.
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Great idea, I'll print one right away.
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Great idea, I'll print one right away.
hahaha... you'd better hold your breath untill the build finishes :p
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Need to make an open source ventilated box with exhaust duct project you can build without violating any patents for any specific uses for such a device.
No, that is not an enclosure for my RepRap, due to workspace restrictions I am forced to have the two projects occupy roughly the same area on my bench.
How do they compare to pollen? (Score:5, Funny)
How do they compare to pollen? Are they full of spiky little projectiles that want to burrow into my nasal cavities and cross-polinate with my mucus membranes to create a giant mutant dandelion in my head? No? Then I'm not... ahh, ahhhhh, AH-CHOO!, sniff. worried.
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Eeew gross!
Are there videos on the net?
Google "Two nostrils One Cup".
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Yours maybe. My brain is HUGE!
Potentially you can also: (Score:3)
- trip on the power cord
- drop the printer on your big toe
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- burn your fingers
check
- trip on the power cord
check
- drop the printer on your big toe
not yet, but it has been half way off the table and just about ready too... If it did I'd be more woried about the printer: I can print a replacement foot with my printer, but no matter how much I try my foot refuses to make me even the simplest printing press.
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This just in. (Score:3, Funny)
So if they make UFP (Score:2)
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I'm sure, for example, nanoparticles of plastics are much more hazardous than nanoparticles of burnt toast.
Given the long-known harmful effects of soot, and the newly-discovered harmful effects of carbon nanoparticles, that would seem a spectacularly unsafe assumption.
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They want funding... (Score:2)
Another lot of "Researchers" wanting to use scare tactics to get funding.
"Additionally, more controlled experiments should be conducted...."
I like to see the testing results in a wood shop or metal shop. Let them measure nano particle emissions when using spray cans or how about a simple inkjet printer?
Suddenly the world is full of "Harmful" nano particles. Scary things you can't see or prove easily always good for a good scare.
We need a nano tax to stop the inhuman crime of nano particle emission. I want t
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I want to see Greenpest protesting against nano pollution. Get your banners out morons.
Yes, that's it! They should wave microscopic banners protesting the nanoparticles! We could use a bunch of protestors as a sort of Maxwell's Demon, to use their tiny signs to bat away the bad nanoparticles while admitting the good natural nanoparticles.
Oh crap (Score:2)
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Just letting those laser printer nanos collect in the room so you can get them all when you go in to get your printouts.
You need to think of your heath man...
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OMFG (Score:2)
melting plastic results in fumes, gee go figure, glad we wasted our collective tax money on yet another "NO FUCKING SHIT" study
Sounds like a setup... (Score:4, Insightful)
For regulation, and then restriction.
OhMiGawd! (Score:2)
I use a gas or electric stove on a nightly basis! Some nights I even *sobs* barbecue!
Wow. So these things make slightly less nanoscale dust than most 2D printers (which, inkjet or laser, make dusting your bookshelf look practically good for you). Call me when the liberal media stops trying to spread FUD about "gun printers".
Where this research should have gone... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, smoke sometimes curls from the printhead. No surprises there. Usually, there's not much, but hey, ABS chemicals aren't exactly a health-product.
What I would have liked to have known though is whether the use of covers ( eg, stabilising temperature and keeping the workpiece enclosed ) make any difference.
There is actually benefit to using covered printers, so it wouldn't be that difficult to add some filters to them would it? It's an entirely practical approach too, since plastic fumes are always worth avoiding.
And the use of less emotive terms for smoke would have been nano-appreciated.
GrpA
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There is actually benefit to using covered printers
FWIW, in the old days of dot-matrix printers, sound covers were common for big printers in offices. Interesting that we would make covers for a product that emits a bit of bothersome noise, but not for one that emits airborne particles.
Invalidate enclosure patent? (Score:2)
Above poster suggests study should have included mitigation effect of enclosures.
It would be interesting if an OSHA, CDC or other regulation/law could require enclosures, and invalidate the patent some company IIRC holds on them for public health reasons.
Hype much? (Score:2)
Translocating (Score:2)
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So what you're saying is... (Score:2)
It's the same as other shit we do every single day of our lives. Why is this written as a DOOM! story???
Re:Obvious Government FUD (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, if you 3D-print a gun it can potentially emit a harmful normal-sized particle.
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That's the point, so you can defend against getting your head bashed into the sidewalk by a 17 year old with Iced Tea and Skittles.
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This is obvious FUD created by some government to prevent people from using 3D printers to print guns.
Yup. Pretty much this right here. "We can't control it, so we'll make you scared of it." Complete bullcrap. Use it in a well ventilated area or add a few household filters to the room.
There hasn't been enough of these out for a long enough time for "OMG THEY CAUSE CANCER" of any kind. (Except in Commifornia, where everything causes cancer except liberalism.)
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Use it in a well ventilated area or add a few household filters to the room.
And/or use one of those face masks you can get from the hardware store.
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I'd go out on a limb and suggest that PLA is pretty damn "natural".
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Our body evolved and *adapted* to deal with parasites, viruses, etc, you dumbfuck. It didn't adapt to this shit.
I'd have to disagree with that, but only because you're wrong here. The natural world has a lot of small crap in it, including a lot of toxic, sharp and otherwise dangerous to breathe stuff. Even asbestos dust occurs naturally though probably not in quantities large enough to affect our evolution.
And I wonder what our relatively high resistance to toxins like round up comes from? I'd say evolutionary exposure to other such toxins in what we eat and breathe.
Second, you clearly aren't considering dosage
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:)
Yeah, I take my chances of cooked lentils over melted plastic.
:) :)
Tell me when you get to the "cooked lentils 3D printing" level.
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If only that bastard Nixon were still alive to account for the atrocities of the agency he created so many years ago.