Follow Up to "Vent Your Printer. Do it Now"

I trust this will not devolve into a political diatribe regarding vaccination, as did my previous post on this topic. Kudos to the forum moderators for their diplomatic handling.

However, I think a follow up is in order.

Last year I developed a severe allergic reaction to 3D printing of PLA. It was eventually treated with a phenomenally expensive gene suppressing ointment, recently approved by the FDA here in the US.

The dermatologist eventually surmised that the allergy MAY have been triggered due to various vaccinations, OR it may have just been a multi-year exposure to a constant irritant (FDM printing).
He did agree that the allergen was PLA, although a standard 3 day "patch test" indicated that my only allergy was to...gold.

In any case, I am about 98% recovered, and have added a HEPA filter and activated charcoal post scrubber to my printer, which allows me to carefully continue using this fascinating technology.

I do not wish anyone to go through what I experienced over the past 10 months, and strongly recommend that all 3D printers, of any type, be well vented so as to reduce or eliminate exposure to their by-products, whether resin or filament. I'm sure that the vast majority of users will never see a reaction like mine, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Glad to hear you're doing better. Maybe you should not print PLA any more.

I get prescription meds through Canada Pharmacy. The stuff I use ships to me from New Zealand and costs 1/15th what it would at a US pharmacy. Look them up.

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Son of MegaMax 3D printer: [www.instructables.com]
Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

... the biggest problems with filaments are the additives -- dyes, melting and mechanical optimizers and others, mostly not documented for different reasons

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Quite glad to hear that you're doing better and thank you very much for the cautionary tale and sharing your experience!

Quote
obelisk79
Quite glad to hear that you're doing better and thank you very much for the cautionary tale and sharing your experience!

Thank you, Sir! Doing the first print in quite some time, with the VDE extruder (see the tech section). The HEPA and charcoal filters seems to be keeping any reaction in check.

Hi,

A couple of years ago I was worried about the health issues with 3D printing and contacted various filament suppliers about the issue as well as Professor Brent Stephens (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.12578).
I also invested in a tvoc/fine dust measuring device and designed several filter contraptions.
From what I observed the glue/liquids I used for bed adhesion (dimafix in my case) seem to be as bad or worse as the 3D printing itself, 95% of what I print is ABS, the other 5% igus/nylon/ppa etc.
Some filament suppliers also used advanced filtration systems for in house testing.

I ended up putting the 3D printer outside (my daughter was just a baby at that time), which solves all these issues with more certainty than any filter.
It was outside for 3 years and this has worked well when it wasn't freezing, it was inside a shelter (don't know the correct name for it) so was protected from the rain but not from the cold/moisture.
My printer uses igus bearings on igus sliders so rust isn't an issue, now it's inside because of some upgrades but I'll put it outside again when I'm finnished with those.

Bram