Chemicals safe?

Not sure if this is the right place to ask..but since it's for chemicals...thought i'd see...

Are the chemicals needed for developing film and black and white safe to be around while pregnant? My husband got me a darkroom set-up for Christmas and just as I was getting all excited my mom asked if it was safe :confused: and I don't know lol...Anyone know? I was planning on trying out vinegar for stop bath but there's still the others that I'll be exposed to....maybe I should wear a mask to be sure? they didn't cover this in highschool photography lol

Yes you'll be safe. Your not ingesting any chemicals and people eat pickled food while pregnant so the vinegar fumes won't harm you either

Ian

Distilled white vinegar and stop bath are the same thing, acetic acid. Stop bath is sold as 28% acid and white vinegar is around 5%. Dilute either to working strength and you wind up with something around 2 1/2% acid and the rest water. Indicator stop bat has a bit of dye in it that changes color to violet/purple when the bath is exhausted. That's it. No reason to use vinegar, because stop bath is cheaper and has the indicator. Fixer is pretty harmless stuff at working strength too. I wouldn't drink it, but I don't worry about being around an open tray of the stuff. Developers have potentially the most toxic ingredients, and even these are so dilute in most cases to make the point moot.

My take on the situation is this. Get the materials safety data sheets for the products you want to use and present them to your OBGYN. Tell the doctor what you want to do and ask for an opinion. If the doctor doesn't know, ask for a reference to a toxicologist. If you don't want to do that, don't delve into the darkroom while pregnant or nursing to be on the safe side.

This is one of the reasons I like Kodak's chemistry. The company maintains MSDS documentsin PDF format on their web site and they are not too hard to find.

My latewife and I had six healthy children and she spent many hours in the darkroom developing film and making prints. It was not the darkroom work that killed her, but ovarian cancer, 39 years after the last one was born.

If you rrrrrreally want safe, there are vitamin C based developers for film and (I'm guessing) paper.

Maybe the best film developer from a hyper safe point of view might be Caffenol C a vitamin C and instant coffee developer. Not kidding. Instant coffee has developing agents, and vitamin C is one too.
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Quoting from: http://silent1.home.netcom.com/Photography/Dilutions and Times.html

"Caffenol C film developer
Household metric
Water 8 oz 450 ml
Arm & Hammer Washing Soda 2.5 tsp (level) 2 g
Ascorbic Acid or Erythorbic Acid (97%) 1 g* 2 g
Folger's Coffee Crystals 4 tsp (slightly rounded) 8 tsp

Mix soda until completely dissolved and solution is clear.
Add coffee, mix until all grittiness is gone and solution is uniform, let stand 5-10 minutes until microbubbles clear.
Use within 30 minutes.
*1 g = approx. 1/4 tsp

Use undiluted
Starting point development time: 12 mins

Notes: Expect slight film speed increase (1/3 to 2/3 stop) and little or no stain. Reduce agitation to eliminate flow marks."

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perhaps someone else knows a vitamin C based paper developer w/o and metol, phenidone, or dimezone etc in it ... ?

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stop is vinegar - no issue with that.

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Fix, use plain hypo. Sodium Thiosulfate. Hypo is used in swimming pools to adjust the ph or some such. I don't imagine it should be a problem.

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Sodium Sulfite? Do I remember correctly that it is used in canning food? Or am I thinking of something else? Anyhow, sulfite is near ubiquitous in processing chemistry. By itself it is a good washing agent. Also used in, ummm, 99% of developers. Shows up in virtually every category of processing solution.

Use nitrile gloves or similar and or tongs to keep hands out of chemicals. Belt and suspenders approach.


Best,

C

Thanks for all the tips

fschifano said:

Get the materials safety data sheets for the products you want to use and present them to your OBGYN. Tell the doctor what you want to do and ask for an opinion. If the doctor doesn't know, ask for a reference to a toxicologist.

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Yeah, good luck with that. I am a physician myself; the OB-GYN won't know jack about it, and from fear you sue him/her if the kid doesn't get into MIT in 18 years, s/he'll advise staying out of the darkroom entirely.

Unless the doc is a photographer.

Sad, but likely true....

Chemicals

This is my two cents' worth of advice. Based on the research I did as part of an industrial safety course while an undergraduate, I'd agree that black-and-white is generally safe (except for toning agents which contain various heavy metals). However, it's probably wise to stay away from color chemistry while you are pregnant. An excellent book on the subject is "Overexposure: Health Hazards in Photography" by Susan Shaw, which Amazon should have.

svl3b said:

Not sure if this is the right place to ask..but since it's for chemicals...thought i'd see...

Are the chemicals needed for developing film and black and white safe to be around while pregnant? My husband got me a darkroom set-up for Christmas and just as I was getting all excited my mom asked if it was safe :confused: and I don't know lol...Anyone know? I was planning on trying out vinegar for stop bath but there's still the others that I'll be exposed to....maybe I should wear a mask to be sure? they didn't cover this in highschool photography lol

Click to expand...

Congratulations on the baby. It can't hurt to wear a mask around the powders as they are being mixed. You are perfectly safe with liquid concentrates, as they cannot be accidentally inhaled like powders when you mix. Vinegar will likely be more expensive than actual stop bath, and it is the same thing and takes up more space, as it is not as highly concentrated.

I would just suggest avoiding Dektol or anything else powered for now. You can use Ilford Multigrade or Ilford PQ Universal till later.

If you are bothered at all by the smell of darkroom chemicals then I can recommend odorless stop bath and odorless fixer. Both can be bought from Freestyle. The odorless stop bath contains citric acid. It is economical, works well and has no smell. The odor less fixer also works well but the concentrate does not have the same shelf life as Kodak Rapid Fixer or Kodafix. My Agefix is almost gone and I have stocked up on Kodak C-41 fixer which is supposed to be fine for b&w work. I will soon mix up another batch of Patrick Gainer's famous PC-TEA film developer. It is made from phenidone, vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and triethanolamine. These are relatively safe chemicals to handle and to dispose of.

It's probably a good idea to avoid toners during pregnancy.

rthomas said:

An excellent book on the subject is "Overexposure: Health Hazards in Photography" by Susan Shaw, which Amazon should have.

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It has several glaring mistakes. The section on ferricyanide was quite bad. At least the version I saw in the late 80s.