Important Safety Tip
This weekend I had a terrible surprise. My house was filled with a styrene gas. I woke up literally choking to death as if I had been attacked by a WWI gas munition such as chlorine or phosgene. The source of this gas was my latest miniatures project!
The weekend began in a panic. I had spent 3 exhausting weeks working overtime at my job, losing critical time to get terrain finished for my entries in the Greater Pacific War Project at Nashcon. I had been constructing the buildings out of foamcore mounting boards and white glue. I needed to get them assembled faster. I chose a faster drying glue. In this case, I selected a two-part epoxy glue that had a set time of 5 minutes (as opposed to the 4 hours white glue has).
For those in Europe, I believe American White Glue is the same as PVA or at least extremely similar.
I wasn't concerned about the effects of the epoxy on the styrofoam inner core because it was hard in 5 minutes. What could go wrong? Well, it turns out that even hard, it continues to have a chemical reaction. This resulted in the production of gas unhindered for 9-10 hours. There wasn't a lot of gas, and it did not have a very strong smell, so I continued to be unconcerned. Having gotten a number of buildings done by 1 am, I called it a night.
I woke up at 9 am with a headache. This may mislead you into thinking I just felt a little weary. Let me dissuade you of this notion. I felt like I had been shot in the right side of the head with an expanding bullet that took out the left side of my head. My first conscious thought, literally, was how can I be in this much pain and still be alive? I forced myself out of bed, grabbed some over-the-counter pain medication and had a bit of breakfast. I had not eaten dinner the night before and figured maybe I was just hungry. Then the nausea hit. At this point I was determined to just shrug it off. I had a lot more work to do making buildings.
There comes a point when you realize things are not following your assumptions. My assumption was I was just hungry or perhaps I had allergies or maybe both. What changed my mind was when the projectile vomiting began. It was then that I realized I could smell something funny in the house. It wasn't a strong odor, but it was odd. It was worse than the epoxy glue smell but weak. What I didn't realize was that at that point I had dipped down to 6-10% blood/oxygen mix (normal is around 21%) and my senses were shutting down. I could hardly walk straight. I had a hard time thinking things through, but it was obvious something was drastically wrong and that I must be breathing in fumes. I called the Nashville Fire Department which sent an ambulance and other emergency equipment.
I was taken to the hospital and given oxygen for 3 hours. My symptoms all lifted as the gas was exhaled through normal processes and the oxygen re-enriched my bloodstream. If I had not woken up I probably would have been killed by the gas.
The safety tips I have are as follows:
- Don't use epoxy or solvents or spray-paint and Styrofoam together.
- If you have to, do it in a well-ventilated area (like the outside!).
- If you suspect you have dissolving Styrofoam, remove it to the outside – in my case, the buildings produced gas for 48 hours, and the surface area covered was 1/4 inch wide by 15 inches long. Imagine the output of gas had a larger area been affected!
- If you suspect you have been breathing in these types of fumes – get out into fresh air immediately. You can recover just by breathing non-contaminated air for a while. Grab your wallet and keys and cell phone and go – forget all else.
- If you get nauseous and/or vomit, call for help – you need to be given pure oxygen to re-enrich your blood supply.
- Show due care when returning to the area. If you still smell the gas, try to ventilate the area as much as possible and use fans to get the air moving.
A lot of bad could have come of this. If I had children or pets in the house, they could have been killed by the dose that was non-lethal to me. Luckily, I only lost a couple of days' work on a miniatures project.
Some interesting notes:
When I returned to the house later that day, the scent of the gas was distinct, sharp and strong. I had left windows open, but that wasn't enough. I had to take all source of the gas outside and get fans going. It took 24 hours for the house to clear. It took $60 USD in cleaning products to clean the place up, and most of the day Sunday to do it (removing stains, spills, glue, loose foam, etc.). On the plus side, my spring cleaning is now done!
The 5-minute epoxy didn't do as good a job at preventing gaps as I had hoped. In fact, it looked even a bit worse. I am happily returning to the use of white glue for the remainder of this project.