PVC toxicity

tin tin · Post by **tin tin** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 12:00 pm

Hi! I'm new to the board (I introduced myself on the flute board, since that's what I primarily play).
In reading various posts, I see that there is a general high regard for PVC whistles such as Dixon and the Water Weasel.
PVC seems like such a convenient and stable material, but from what I understand, it's rather toxic. http://www.turnertoys.com/PVC_framepage1.htm
Do we want to be sticking this in our mouths? Or, in other words, is there a health risk in playing a PVC whistle?

P.S. I play a Dixon polymer flute...what's the difference between polymer and PVC?

The Weekenders · Post by **The Weekenders** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 12:15 pm

Well, for that matter what about aluminum? I had heard that for a while, they though aluminum leached into the body from cooking with acidic foods and contributed to Alzheimers.
As our saliva presumably has some acidic content, what happens when we continually use aluminum whistles?
I hadn't heard anything bad about PVC. Are you possibly confusing PCBs? They use that for electrical insulation, I think.

Mack.Hoover · Post by **Mack.Hoover** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 12:22 pm

CPVC is specifically made for potable water, hot and cold.
Of course lead was in Roman times, too!
Mack

ChrisA · Post by **ChrisA** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 12:39 pm

For that matter, almost every wood that you might make an instrument out of is 'hazardous' to one degree or another... Mostly to the maker! Still, there's some danger in any wood instrument, since you're either in contact with the wood or with some evil finish that seals you off from the wood completely (like polyeurethane... there's frightening stuff...) The mimforum people (www.mimf.com, mostly guitar makers) have some pages up about the hazards of wood, but I think you have to 'join' to get access to it, and I'm certain I've seen a government site somewhere that lists the various dangerous.

And you do -not- want to know what they put in artist's paints.... a lot of that stuff you're not suppose to get on your fingers or inhale the fumes of... (shyeah, -right- ... they print that to cover themselves in court, but can you imagine trying to paint while wearing an environment suit? No... you get as good of ventilation as you can and hope for the best.)

I think as long as the instruments are made of schedule 40 PVC (the drinking water CPVC) that I'm not too worried, especially by comparison to other things I might be exposed to... and if touching drinking-water pipe to your lips is dangerous, then I hate to think what's happening to the people who have any plastic in their plumbing system...

Excuse me, I have to go back to risking carpel tunnel syndrome in an ozone-heavy environment, and staring down the barrel of an electron gun. It's what I do for a living, you know.

--Chris

Nathangill · Post by **Nathangill** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 1:06 pm

I doubt a PVC whistle will cause health problems so long as it's pipe approved for drinking water (Just don't go using any electrical conduit)

Really - if your water is coming through PVC piping, you may as well play whistle made of it, too - ultimately, that whistle probably won't count for anything.

Copper, I prefer to use for flutes... Though I do have a few whistles I made from it. Just stop if your lips turn green

The Weekenders · Post by **The Weekenders** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 1:29 pm

I feel that way about brass. That seems safest to me.

TelegramSam · Post by **TelegramSam** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 1:39 pm

well, supposedly copper salts are toxic, thus making brass potentially dangerous.

You know what I say? Who cares. The air we breath is toxic, the water we drink is toxic, there are toxins in our food, even organically grown plants have naturally occuring toxins in them. It's really pointless to worry overly much about it. Unless you're continually sucking on your whistle, I wouldn't loose any sleep over it...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: TelegramSam on 2002-06-27 15:40 ]</font>

garycrosby · Post by **garycrosby** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 1:51 pm

I think whistle toxicity is an important issue - I don't want to get poisoned because of some instrument I play. However, the chances of this happening I think are grossly overestimated.

Whistles are commonly made out of PVC, brass, copper, wood, and aluminum. All of these materials are toxic to some degree.

PVC's contain stabilizers that leach out over time - certain PVC's and CPVC's are both designated as "safe" for drinking water (PVC = cold water & CPVC = hot water) even though they do leach a bit. Leaching in plastics tend to be accelerated by several orders of magnitude at high temperatures - even at 160 degrees F (the hottest water you will ever find in a house) the leaching is minimal. I'd be much more concerned about the dose of stabilizers in my leftover casserole that I had for lunch (because I reheated it in a Tupperware container in a microwave) than the toxins I might get from a PCV whistle.

Brass is toxic because it contains lead and copper. The mouthpieces of brass insturments are plated with gold or silver to avoid "brass poisoning".

Copper is toxic because ... well, because its copper and the salts are toxic (they damage the liver). Yet, the plumbing in older houses is copper (the house I live in now is copper pipe with lead-soldered joint).

Aluminum is toxic and is possible linked to Alzheimers. Yet we still drink Coke out of alumimun cans (even though Coke is horrible acidic and eats away at the can) and we cook our acidic spagetti sauce in aluminum pots.

Wood is a natural product but most woods are naturally toxic - they contain substances that inhibit the growth of moulds and bacteria and some contain natural insecticides or produce nasty allergic reactions. I am an avid woodworker so I know a bit about this. A few years ago I created a hairpiece (for my wife not myself) out of the African wood Padouk - I had a bad reaction to it. Cocobolo (related to African Blackwood) frequently produces severe allergic reactions. African Blackwood (one of the woods of choice for fine pipes and whistles) can cause contact dermatitis. Cedar and pine dust both contain naturally ocurring acids that are insectides - they can also lead to serious respiratory problems and liver failure in humans (and for little critters like gerbils and guinea pigs that are kept cedar or pine bedding).

What's my point? Virtually all material is toxic if exposure levels are high enough. The question is whether exposure to toxins from a whistle is going to make a difference considering the toxic-laden environemnt we live in. Personally, I doubt it.

The Weekenders · Post by **The Weekenders** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 1:54 pm

Having seen what is written above, I just think that the saliva and acids make it more of an issue than just living in its midst. Its chemical interaction versus exposure. It's worth exploring and troublesome if our whistle builders aren't plating ala other brass instruments. I didn't even know about that. Might drive up the price though....

If you love whistling and you are young, you might want to think about what goes in your mouth everyday for the next 40 or 50 years....You do have a choice here. Judging by this Forum and personal experience, we really play them a lot!

And for the record, Gary, I don't drink Coke out of cans or cook in alum. pots because of that . It always seemed like common sense not to. But I don't think hi-temp nonstick compounds are innocent either.

Mind you, I don;'t walk around and worry about this stuff but the subject was raised.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: The Weekenders on 2002-06-27 16:09 ]</font>

ndjr · Post by **ndjr** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 2:36 pm

On 2002-06-27 15:51, garycrosby wrote:

I think whistle toxicity is an important issue - I don't want to get poisoned because of some instrument I play. However, the chances of this happening I think are grossly overestimated.

Agreed. They are at least grossly overstated.

Brass is toxic because it contains lead and copper. The mouthpieces of brass insturments are plated with gold or silver to avoid "brass poisoning".

Actually, brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, though there may perhaps be trace amounts of lead present as an impurity. I don't know of any all-brass pennywhistles that have plated mouthpieces, including my Copeland. What would they be plated with that would be less harmful than the brass? Gold, perhaps, or platinum? Silver is toxic, but used to be used in metallic form in medical appliances.

Copper is toxic because ... well, because its copper and the salts are toxic (they damage the liver). Yet, the plumbing in older houses is copper (the house I live in now is copper pipe with lead-soldered joint).

In trace amounts, copper is also a nutrient. Scale appears to be important here. If the soldering is done competently in the water pipes, the danger from it is slim to none. Lead generally only mobilizes in very soft waters anyway, so if you have hard water it will stay put.

Aluminum is toxic and is possible linked to Alzheimers. Yet we still drink Coke out of alumimun cans (even though Coke is horrible acidic and eats away at the can) and we cook our acidic spagetti sauce in aluminum pots.

The latter can be a problem if one is not using something like Calphalon cookware which has a coating that prevents contact of the food with the pot. One wonders parenthetically about the coating, but we'll let that slide. Coke is packaged in aluminum cans, as are many other beverages, but the liquid does not come in contact with the metal because of a coating which completely seals the inside of the can. ( I used to work summers in a factory where cans are made. ) It has been known for many decades that one should never put soft drinks or fruit drinks in aluminum canteens.

What's my point? Virtually all material is toxic if exposure levels are high enough. The question is whether exposure to toxins from a whistle is going to make a difference considering the toxic-laden environemnt we live in. Personally, I doubt it.

Presumably we all know how toxic mercury is, but if you've ever had a tooth filled it is, or was, done with dental amalgam. Amalgam is a mixture of gold or silver with mercury ( they dissolve in it ). Those little black beads you spit out are droplets of mercury, and some of it gets swallowed. Fortunately, it generally passes through the system and out the other end.

Where mercury, lead, and other metals really pose a danger is when they occur in organic compounds. This is why the tetra-ethyl lead used for so many years as an anti-knock compound in gasoline was so dangerous. Those of you who remember the smell of the exhaust from an engine burning leaded gasoline know it has a sweet odor. That sweet odor was the lead. The Roman gentry used to mull their wine in lead bowls because it imparted a sweet taste to the drink, and probably poisoned themselves while they were at it.

As Gary indicates, it isn't worthwhile to get too excited about metal or PVC whistles.

Gary · Post by **Gary** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 2:46 pm

Yikes! This stuff is scary!

'Honey! Throw out the dinner ware. We're switching to plastic sporks!'

Tyghress · Post by **Tyghress** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 3:30 pm

Live hard. Die young. Pass me my whistle and to hell with the consequences.

ChrisA · Post by **ChrisA** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 3:50 pm

Uhm, the dental amalgam is non-toxic because the silver and the mercury bind to each other tighter than the acids in you can break them apart. If you swallowed drops of un-mixed mercury, it would assuredly not be harmless, nor does it need to occur only in compounds to be harmful... the vapors of liquid mercury were quite harmful to the historic (and immortalized by Lewis Carroll) hatter. It does, however, take a good deal of exposure to damage you. Mercury is also a cumulative toxin... once it's in you, it doesn't leave, so while you might not be harmed by ingesting, say, a milligram of mercury, you would be eventually if you ingested a milligram annually... (I don't, offhand, know how much it actually takes to cause brain damage).

Not to say that organic compounds containing mercury are harmless, either... I strongly recommend against eating locoweed!

--Chris

Pan · Post by **Pan** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 6:15 pm

ChrisA,

just so you know, the dental amalgam is VERY
soluable and POISONOS in the mouth in a human being. This is a very sensitive subject for me and I get very upset when I read something like you wrote.

Once the dental amalgam is removed from the mouth, the levels of mercury in the human tissue slowly gets lower. However it takes a year or more to be free from this discusting stuff. The "halfing time" of mercury is about 6 months in the body and even more in the brain/spinal system.

The worst of all.. it does NOT takes much at all to cause problems in a human. Mercury is VERY poisonous even from dental amalgam which is NOT stable in the mouth.

Peace

/Peter

The Weekenders · Post by **The Weekenders** » Thu Jun 27, 2002 6:26 pm

Re Peter's post:
After reading some information about this a while back, I surrendered to the thought that we're probably all (those with lifetime amalgam fillings) runnin around in a state of dimished capacity. did I then get porcelain fillings? No, but everybody probably ought to....

You never know when something might be completely abandoned like thalidomide, or new contrary evidence might make us all feel like alarmists. We did stop using bluemass and bleeding for medicine though I am sure there were those who scoffed at the early warnings...

Amalgam has been the stock in trade for a long time. Any whistling dentists out there to balance/agree/disagree with Peter's assertions? Way OT but that's no first for the Weekender right? And it is about toxicity which is like, almost, the thread.......