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I have some cool mask-related stuff coming up (hopefully by week's end), but we've got our costume designer in-house right now, which means my time is somewhat at a premium. I did recently write up a post in response to a question posed to the DyersLIST email group, in which the querant asked:
...where would I get to read the actual medical literature about risks of MX as a lung irritant?
Essentially, she wondered how one goes about sifting through word-of-mouth warnings about products and finding documentable hazard assessments of products--in this case, ProChemical's fiber-reactive MX dye, but what i'm talking about could apply to any product you might use in costume production, whether it be paints, dyes, adhesives, solvents, laundry supplies, what-have-you. Here's my response:
As I understand it, essentially, many commercial dyestuffs have not been specifically tested brand by brand, so you have to do your own legwork to find out what if any information is out there on their hazards.
The first thing i tell my students to do is to find the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) for the product--every vendor is required by law to give you a copy of the MSDS for a product upon request, and most of them are downloadable from the product's websites. ProChemical is great about this, and has all their MSDS on their website. For MX, the MSDSs are broken down by color. Here's the one for Winter White 010:
http://www.prochemical.com/MaterialSafety/MX/MX010.pdf
I have them read the whole thing, looking for clues to where they'd find more info (MSDS don't always have all the info out there on them)--on this MSDS, there's mention made in Section 4 that MX dyes are reactive dyes. So, the next thing we do is look at what OSHA has to say about dyestuffs, particularly reactive dyes:
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/aafa/hazards.html
Down in the Dyes section, OSHA provides this link to a study on the dyes:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/tis5.pdf
So, from there you have some info to do further research if you want to, or to choose what you feel is adequate protection for usage of the product.
I encourage my students to do this sort of investigating into every product they use--you never know what might be harmful or harmless, and if a little research leads you to adopt a safety practice like wearing gloves or particulate filters that then saves you some hospital stays later in life, excellent. Usually a scan through the MSDS and some further poking around on the OSHA site will get you the info you want.
* * [fin] * *
I can't recommend enough Monona Rossol's book, The Health and Safety Guide for Film, TV, and Theater--industry is far outstripping the arts when it comes to educating practitioners on health and safety. Particularly since many artists work as solo freelancers (and thus aren't subject to OSHA regulations or protected by them), the onus is on the individual to do the legwork, do the research, find out the hazards, and protect herself or himself against them.
...where would I get to read the actual medical literature about risks of MX as a lung irritant?
Essentially, she wondered how one goes about sifting through word-of-mouth warnings about products and finding documentable hazard assessments of products--in this case, ProChemical's fiber-reactive MX dye, but what i'm talking about could apply to any product you might use in costume production, whether it be paints, dyes, adhesives, solvents, laundry supplies, what-have-you. Here's my response:
As I understand it, essentially, many commercial dyestuffs have not been specifically tested brand by brand, so you have to do your own legwork to find out what if any information is out there on their hazards.
The first thing i tell my students to do is to find the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) for the product--every vendor is required by law to give you a copy of the MSDS for a product upon request, and most of them are downloadable from the product's websites. ProChemical is great about this, and has all their MSDS on their website. For MX, the MSDSs are broken down by color. Here's the one for Winter White 010:
http://www.prochemical.com/MaterialSafety/MX/MX010.pdf
I have them read the whole thing, looking for clues to where they'd find more info (MSDS don't always have all the info out there on them)--on this MSDS, there's mention made in Section 4 that MX dyes are reactive dyes. So, the next thing we do is look at what OSHA has to say about dyestuffs, particularly reactive dyes:
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/aafa/hazards.html
Down in the Dyes section, OSHA provides this link to a study on the dyes:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/tis5.pdf
So, from there you have some info to do further research if you want to, or to choose what you feel is adequate protection for usage of the product.
I encourage my students to do this sort of investigating into every product they use--you never know what might be harmful or harmless, and if a little research leads you to adopt a safety practice like wearing gloves or particulate filters that then saves you some hospital stays later in life, excellent. Usually a scan through the MSDS and some further poking around on the OSHA site will get you the info you want.
I can't recommend enough Monona Rossol's book, The Health and Safety Guide for Film, TV, and Theater--industry is far outstripping the arts when it comes to educating practitioners on health and safety. Particularly since many artists work as solo freelancers (and thus aren't subject to OSHA regulations or protected by them), the onus is on the individual to do the legwork, do the research, find out the hazards, and protect herself or himself against them.
