Australian Study Of Risk With Epoxy Resins

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30191, 24 July 1963, Page 10

Australian Study Of Risk With Epoxy Resins

Epoxy resins, the main chemicals in the controversial adhesive being used by tilers on the Christchurch-Lyttelton road tunnel, are the subject of an article in the Labour Department’s “Labour and Employment Gazette” of November, 1962. The author of the article, Dr. E. O. Longley, Medical Officer of the Division of Occupational Health, Sydney, says that several eminent skin specialists have said they consider exposure to epoxy resins and amine to be the gi ?atest single source of “contact” dermatitis in industry today. “Generally our findings were that no-one could assume immunity, but skins which sunburned readily usually reacted more severely to the epoxy resins and hardeners,” he says. “Some skins were so susceptible that dermatitis might occur after a few hours’ exposure. Other skins showed no reaction to immersion in mixed resin and hardener for some hours.”

Dr. Longley says that medical opinion throughout the world is almost unanimous that the incidence of dermatitis in those at risk could be up to 100 per cent. Sensitisation can occur after a few hours, days, months, or years, and may result from contact either with the resin or hardener. This occurs in the fair and dark skinned with almost equal facility, and results either from skin contact or exposure to the vapour.

Dr. Longley says that the manager of an engineering

factory developed a mild rash if one of his employees carried a moulded epoxy-resin object through the room in which he was working. Workers who perspire freely, he says, are especially susceptible to dermatitis. The incidence is likely to be higher in hot weather than in the winter. On the subject of precautions to be taken in handling. Dr. Longley says that the socalled barrier creams are useful. They do not. however, provide more than a fraction of the safety required. “The employee should be educated to know that these resins must be handled with the same care as, say, nitric acid, and be warned not to let ‘familiarity breed contempt’,” he says. Dr. Longley quotes these case histories of outbreaks in New South Wales, which, he says, he hoped will serve as a timely warning:—

The manager of a brush company developed a rash on the face and eyelids after using epoxy resin for one day experimentally. Fumes were the cause. Two men were employed using epoxy resin in the manufacture of golf-club heads. Both developed dermatitis after a few weeks. Previously in the same factory an outbreak of dermatitis had occurred in the fishingrod section, where three men had been affected by a different hardener. Two men using epoxy resin to glue glass sheets to aluminium sheeting developed dermatitis, one man becoming so sensitive that he could no longer enter the room where this was done. The process had to be abandoned. In one large electrical factory almost 200 cases of dermatitis occurred in two years, says Dr. Longley. It appears, he says, that the

use of epoxy resins will gain in popularity in the plastic* field because of useful properties they possess “They are resilient and strong. thermosetting and heart resisting, resistant to shock and vibration, freely mixable with filling agents such as metal powder, make excellent bonding agents with fibre-glass, and. most important, they do not shrink,” he says.

Dr. Longley says that in all cases where epoxy resins have been used without trouble, strict precautions were taken.

Cyclist Hurt.— Fritz Vallentine Schwwhgeu-, of 367 Armagh street, suffered a shoulder injury when hus bicycle and a car colluded at the corner of Barbadoes and Tuarn streets at 5.40 p.m. on Monday. Mr Schwaiger was treated at the Christchurch Hospital and discharged.