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So recently I have obtained some FW stuff (just a character model and some shoulder pads.) I am too scared of cancer to assemble the though.

I have been in the hobby since 2009 and have been handling plastic models without using a dust mask.

I have heard that GW plastic can cause health problems and I have worked on a LOT of models in 5 years.

Should I be worried about getting cancer?

Resin can cause health problems and you should use a dust mask. The plastic is fine though.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Resin can cause health problems and you should use a dust mask. The plastic is fine though.

On the resin front what sort of "health problems?"

Cancer or something worse?

But yeah dust mask and goggles will be used.

I dunno, just respiratory stuff. I've given up worrying about stuff that might give you cancer, too much to keep track of and it might just happen to you anyway. But yeah wear a mask. Not sure goggles are overly necessary.

Also, if you use a wet file/sandpaper when filing, or do it underwater, the dust will just stick to the tool or stay in the water. And obviously a well ventilated place is recommended. Resin dust is fairly nasty, but if you're careful it's not gonna do much, if anything.

Unless you have been sniffing the resin dust from the table, I wouldn't be worried. I'd still use a mask though, you can get some basic factory ones really cheap on eBay.

From the size of the models and the likely amount of resin you've ingested, the worse you'll probably get is a cough.

 Bronzefists42 wrote:
So recently I have obtained some FW stuff (just a character model and some shoulder pads.) I am too scared of cancer to assemble the though.

I have been in the hobby since 2009 and have been handling plastic models without using a dust mask.

I have heard that GW plastic can cause health problems and I have worked on a LOT of models in 5 years.

Should I be worried about getting cancer?

There are a host of things other than plastic models that will lead to cancer. The water you drink, the food you eat, the air you breathe, just to name a few. I wear a mask when I spray my models because that stuff is nasty, but really you shouldn't worry about your hobby giving you cancer.

If you are using a dremel tool, or something like that yeah wear a mask because it will be moving fast enough to throw lots of particles into the air. If you are just cleaning and mold lining you will be fine.

 Bronzefists42 wrote:
Should I be worried about getting cancer?

Terrified of it...

...but, depending on how you look at things - this might be good (or bad) news:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/02/health/cancer-random-mutation/index.html

The biggest factors that lead to cancer are craptastic luck - and crappy genes. That is why you can look around and see 90 year old farmers in the Midwest who have never opened a bottle of sun block, smoke two packs a day while filling up tractors with diesel fuel to spray anhydrous ammonia fertilizer...who never get cancer, not even a touch of a suspicious looking mole. At the same time, you have people who never have seen the unfiltered light of day, eat granola and organic, free ranged yuppy chow and die at the age of 30 of lung cancer.

Now, that doesn't mean you should just throw fate to the wind...you might have crappy genes and crappy luck, which with the right stimulus can lead to cancer. Even if it doesn't lead to cancer, there are a whole lot of other issues that are caused by dust that are not cancer (and are in many ways worse...no chemo for a lung fool of fibroids).

Regardless of the medium in question, take proper precautions. If you are sanding wood, metal, resin or plastic...control the dust. If you are spraying paints, control the overspray. If you are working with solvents, control the fumes. Educate yourself of what part of the process is dangerous, how dangerous it may be and then make informed decisions for yourself on how best to deal with those things.

I very rarely wear any sort of PPE when doing hobby stuff (other than gloves). I deal with almost everything by ventilation. Not a little window fan or opening a door - but proper, industrial 3000 CFM exhaust system that gets all the stuff I don't want to breathe away from where I am pretty darn quick. Quite often though, I don't even worry about that. If I am cutting a resin model with a razor saw - there is some dust, but not so much it gets airborne. After I am done cutting, I wipe things down with a damp paper towel and toss it in the trash...dust gone.

Just don't get too carried away with things. Walking around outside on a breezy day will expose you to many more carcinogens...even if you live in a pristine location untouched by the industrial revolution. Mother Nature hates you, and she wants you dead (everything from cosmic radiation to pollen and silica dust from wind erosion...not to mention the grizzly bears who will eat you, even if you do drive a Prius).

Yarp. I've had it, long before I started mucking about with minis and plastic and resin (And that itself was long before 2009) and a mask and damp file/sanding paper are my standbys. If you're especially paranoid, look about a HEPA vacuum cleaner or something. I'm still a bit paranoid myself, but as Sean says, a bit of education goes a long way; and I figured that if I avoided everything I was paranoid about, I'd never go outside...

Everything gives you cancer mate. Its been mentioned above, but just be careful when sanding down resins. Id only be worried if you were sanding down monstrous amounts though, cleaning up a finecast or forge world item i wouldnt worry about it

As Sean_OBrien has summed up very well, just about anything can cause cancer in the wrong amounts. We can try to mitigate the causes of cancer and we can treat the symptoms and maybe someday we can 'cure' it when it strikes, but there is no way under the sun that we'll be able to completely eradicate it from our lives. In any case, you probably don't need to fear cancer from resin dust. The primary cause for concern with resin dust (and by extension any other abrasive dust or particulate) is respiratory problems. The dust, being so fine and abrasive *can* cause problems in large amounts and over extended periods of time as the particles build up within the lungs and can neither be removed nor broken down. The most common example of this is that suffered by Coal Miners - the coal dust created by the striking of tools on the coal face, movement of coal around the mine etc is breathed in by the frequently unmasked (Masks are more common nowadays though due to Health and Safety standards) miners and cannot be removed. However, that said, in the case of the average hobbyist, the dust created by your sanding of mouldlines etc. is negligible in comparison. Breathing in resin dust in these occasions is likely to cause irritation to the respiratory system (Mouth, Throat, Lungs, Nose), but it'll be a long time and much more dust before you approach anything like Black Lung (The common term for the condition Coal Miners suffer).

TLR - Wear a mask to be safe, but I wouldn't get yourself worked up by anything like cancer or a terminal condition. You really have to be snorting the stuff to really damage yourself.

1. Wear a mask if possible.
2. Make sure you have some ventilation - even an open window and door for a through-draft will help.
3. I tend to wet my sandpaper until it's damp enough for the dust to stick, helps to keep it down a bit.

When it comes to dust ALL of them are bad to breathe.

ALL of them.
Some are a lot worse than others (like Asbestos or powdered silicates or coal). The cancer risk from inhaling resin dust is minor - but as for ANY dust, use a mask anyway.

 Warpig1815 wrote:

2. Make sure you have some ventilation - even an open window and door for a through-draft will help.

I would actually disagree with that - at least when it comes to dust. If you can't suck it all away from you, entirely...leave it where it is. An open window can take the dust that falls harmlessly at the saw kerf and throw it into the air for you to breath in (or to be spread around the house. If you leave it alone, you can wipe things down with a damp paper towel to remove the offending particulate once done cutting/sanding.

An exception would be rotary or other powered tools. Those throw the dust into the air, so I would recommend an extraction method of some form (large format or localized at the tool). Even if you were to wear a mask while you work, it is a false sense of security. The fine dust created by them hangs in the air for hours after work has been completed, gets picked up by household ventilation and scattered about.

Mask, and if so worried do it outside.

Lots of fresh air, a light breeze you won,t be having any problems.
Any dust will be well mitigated by a large open area plus above methods added from other posters

 jhe90 wrote:
Mask, and if so worried do it outside.

Lots of fresh air, a light breeze you won,t be having any problems.
Any dust will be well mitigated by a large open area plus above methods added from other posters

You have to be careful when working outside as your ventilation is not controlled. A sudden gust or eddy can blow all the crap straight in to your face. There's some stuff that doesn't require safety glasses when done indoors that I'll tell workers to wear glasses for when they have to work outside in case a gust blows junk in their eyes.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
Mask, and if so worried do it outside.

Lots of fresh air, a light breeze you won,t be having any problems.
Any dust will be well mitigated by a large open area plus above methods added from other posters

You have to be careful when working outside as your ventilation is not controlled. A sudden gust or eddy can blow all the crap straight in to your face. There's some stuff that doesn't require safety glasses when done indoors that I'll tell workers to wear glasses for when they have to work outside in case a gust blows junk in their eyes.

Very true indeed.

I am actually far more concerned about my eyes than my lungs when it comes to working with most things. Several years ago, I was working on one of my cars - cutting loose a rusted bolt with an angle grinder. Bit of metal bounced off my cheek, behind my safety glasses and into my eye. Doctors had to remove it (doesn't take long for metal to embed into your eyeball) and I was wearing an eye patch for a couple weeks afterwards. No permanent damage, but by all accounts I was doing what I was "supposed" to do and still had a trip to the ER.

I would also remind people that outside is a bit like organic...sounds nice, doesn't mean much of anything. While this is an extreme example of outside with fresh air - the reality is that the air outside is always filled with bits and pieces, many of which are more harmful than what you might get if you were inside a stuffy hobby room:



A couple of minutes in that fresh air and you will suck down more garbage than you would after using a Dremel to cut resin models for a lifetime.

Was that picture taken during bushfires or something? I'm pretty sure Sydney doesn't normally look like that

The whole "resin causes cancer" thing is a complete misunderstanding. The components that are mixed to create resin are toxic, but the finished product isn't. The actual danger is entirely the fine dust created by sanding/sawing/etc, and it's the exact same danger as every other kind of fine dust. If you sand a plastic model the dust is just as bad as resin dust, and if you cut a resin model with a knife (producing scrap bits that are too big to inhale) it's just as safe as cutting a plastic model with a knife. The only difference between material types is that resin models tend to involve more dust-producing work to remove them from the "sprue" and prepare the parts for assembly, while many plastic model builders are content to tear their parts off the sprue and never bother to do things like sanding off mold lines or filling gaps between parts.

And OP, you have a character and some shoulder pads. Unless you're planning to grind them into dust and inhale them (and if you do, drugs are cheaper) you're not going to generate enough dust to matter. If you're really paranoid just do everything with a knife and you won't produce any dust.

 Peregrine wrote:
The whole "resin causes cancer" thing is a complete misunderstanding. The components that are mixed to create resin are toxic, but the finished product isn't. The actual danger is entirely the fine dust created by sanding/sawing/etc, and it's the exact same danger as every other kind of fine dust. If you sand a plastic model the dust is just as bad as resin dust, and if you cut a resin model with a knife (producing scrap bits that are too big to inhale) it's just as safe as cutting a plastic model with a knife. The only difference between material types is that resin models tend to involve more dust-producing work to remove them from the "sprue" and prepare the parts for assembly, while many plastic model builders are content to tear their parts off the sprue and never bother to do things like sanding off mold lines or filling gaps between parts.

I was going to say basically this, but Peregrine summed it up perfectly. There's no danger to these models so long as you're not huffing the dust and (preferably) wet sanding when sanding is necessary (because of the aforementioned dust-breathing).

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
I am actually far more concerned about my eyes than my lungs when it comes to working with most things. Several years ago, I was working on one of my cars - cutting loose a rusted bolt with an angle grinder. Bit of metal bounced off my cheek, behind my safety glasses and into my eye. Doctors had to remove it (doesn't take long for metal to embed into your eyeball) and I was wearing an eye patch for a couple weeks afterwards. No permanent damage, but by all accounts I was doing what I was "supposed" to do and still had a trip to the ER.

Just out of curiosity... were you wearing a face shield at the time of the accident?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Was that picture taken during bushfires or something? I'm pretty sure Sydney doesn't normally look like that

2009 dust storms IIRC. I had to cancel a trip down there to visit some friends around the same time period...was a mess for a couple weeks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
I am actually far more concerned about my eyes than my lungs when it comes to working with most things. Several years ago, I was working on one of my cars - cutting loose a rusted bolt with an angle grinder. Bit of metal bounced off my cheek, behind my safety glasses and into my eye. Doctors had to remove it (doesn't take long for metal to embed into your eyeball) and I was wearing an eye patch for a couple weeks afterwards. No permanent damage, but by all accounts I was doing what I was "supposed" to do and still had a trip to the ER.

Just out of curiosity... were you wearing a face shield at the time of the accident?

Glasses with side shields - not a face shield. A face shield would have proven difficult due to the contorted position I needed to get into to actually reach the area in question (rear suspension component on the inside of the wheel well behind the hub). Bit difficult to explain...but, yah - the shield would have been in the way (or pushed between me and the car in a way that would have likely reduced their effectiveness). Even if I had to do it again, I don't think I would have been able to wear a full face shield if I wanted to.

Full face shields can give overconfidence I've noticed. I cringe at the idea of getting metal in my eye, I know a few people who have had it happen to them, it's almost always been when they were wearing safety glasses. I avoid those safety glasses that leave gigantic gaps where stuff can get through and bounce in to my eye.

I've been using a glass pencil for filing the odd mini, and whilst the filing itself is amazingly good, the hands stuck full of glass make me worry too much about my lungs becoming pin cushions to do it again until I get a mask.

Never worried about FW resin though, seems heavy enough to me that it's not a problem. Wear a mask if you're so inclined though and maybe sand over a damp surface or something.

To summarize thread

Resin Doesn't cause cancer unless you're inhaling it like a line of cocaine.

When grinding/sanding wear a facemask/ respirator. Keep area ventilated.

Nothing is %100 protection - Metal in eyeball.

Check Check Check

Now if the OP isn't a hypochondriac now, I am sure using safety items will make his condition worse. LOL

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

 Bronzefists42 wrote:
Should I be worried about getting cancer?

Terrified of it...

...but, depending on how you look at things - this might be good (or bad) news:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/02/health/cancer-random-mutation/index.html

The biggest factors that lead to cancer are craptastic luck - and crappy genes. That is why you can look around and see 90 year old farmers in the Midwest who have never opened a bottle of sun block, smoke two packs a day while filling up tractors with diesel fuel to spray anhydrous ammonia fertilizer...who never get cancer, not even a touch of a suspicious looking mole. At the same time, you have people who never have seen the unfiltered light of day, eat granola and organic, free ranged yuppy chow and die at the age of 30 of lung cancer.

I don't want to derail the thread, but the study clearly show that there's some form of cancer that are heavily influenced bu lifestyle/environment, which lung and skin cancers are prime example of. So your example might not be the best and the concern of the OP might still be justified, despite this one new study. That being said, I wouldn't be that concern from exposure to small trace of airborne resin particles.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Full face shields can give overconfidence I've noticed. I cringe at the idea of getting metal in my eye, I know a few people who have had it happen to them, it's almost always been when they were wearing safety glasses. I avoid those safety glasses that leave gigantic gaps where stuff can get through and bounce in to my eye.

goggles>glasses


Automatically Appended Next Post:
its a shame that its come to this in this day and age, where people are scared to do things because theyve heard so much stuff from health and safety boffins, with scientific studies showing this and these statistics saying that blah blah. its because people are scared of getting sued. we keep getting told to wear rubber gloves when handling POL or the plastic explosives at work.. because we could get cancer. i never do. as long as you properly clean your hands after handling any substances, you'll be fine. i'm not saying totally disregard safety, but you have to use a bit of common sense. if youre elbows deep in acid then yeah wear PPE, but siphoning fuel or applying a bit of lubricant just be careful. my old man has worked on cars his whole life, and never wore silly plastic gloves. he'd come home hands black with grime and oil, wash it all off with swarfega, and that was it. hes now almost 70 and doesnt have cancer, or industrial dermatitis. just goes to show.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Full face shields can give overconfidence I've noticed. I cringe at the idea of getting metal in my eye, I know a few people who have had it happen to them, it's almost always been when they were wearing safety glasses. I avoid those safety glasses that leave gigantic gaps where stuff can get through and bounce in to my eye.

goggles>glasses


Automatically Appended Next Post:
its a shame that its come to this in this day and age, where people are scared to do things because theyve heard so much stuff from health and safety boffins, with scientific studies showing this and these statistics saying that blah blah. its because people are scared of getting sued. we keep getting told to wear rubber gloves when handling POL or the plastic explosives at work.. because we could get cancer. i never do. as long as you properly clean your hands after handling any substances, you'll be fine. i'm not saying totally disregard safety, but you have to use a bit of common sense. if youre elbows deep in acid then yeah wear PPE, but siphoning fuel or applying a bit of lubricant just be careful. my old man has worked on cars his whole life, and never wore silly plastic gloves. he'd come home hands black with grime and oil, wash it all off with swarfega, and that was it. hes now almost 70 and doesnt have cancer, or industrial dermatitis. just goes to show.

The problem with common sense is that people don't often know what hazards there are until something has gone wrong and may never find out if it's the sort of thing that kills you slowly. Read the MSDS whenever you can (it surprises me with all the litigation going around that hobby materials so often slip by with no MSDS's to go with them). Yes, they might go overkill on the recommended safety precautions, but they also tell you what might happen if you don't follow them and you can weigh the risk yourself.

Just because it's not burning your hands off doesn't make it safe. There's plenty of chemicals that can get absorbed through the skin or vapours that can be absorbed through your eyeballs even if you are wearing a mask. There's different kinds of masks for different jobs, rarely do the cheap DIY shop masks actually cover your face properly, sometimes you need air pumped in externally to be safe. There are chemicals that will tear through your typical plastic disposable gloves. You don't have to go far to read stories of people passing out while spraying their car while wearing a mask but an inappropriate one or having exposed skin. I don't even have to go as far as the internet to find more minor cases where people have made themselves sick from exposing themselves when they shouldn't have, "I was coughing for the next week", "I had a headache for 3 days afterwards", "it took my eyes a month to recover", "I almost made myself blind when it got in my eyes, luckily there was an eye wash station nearby" or even just the annoying "my hands were stained for weeks".

No, it's not good to be paranoid, it's good to know what you're working with to be safe.... until you know what you're working with I think I'd prefer people to be paranoid than reckless

(also the mechanics I know who wear plastic gloves primarily do it to protect customer cars rather than protect their hands, they wear the gloves while working on something then take the gloves off before getting in to the car).

They may be less common, but for every handful of "my dad/mate/whatever did this for 30 years and was never sick a day of his life" stories there's a "my dad/mate/whatever got horribly sick after doing that without proper protection".

Don't worry about it, but do wear a dust filter mask when sawing or sanding. You can also cut dust in the air by working wet. General knife work or scraping, no additional protection is really required, just the work that makes a lot of dust.

Just because it's not burning your hands off doesn't make it safe. There's plenty of chemicals that can get absorbed through the skin or vapours that can be absorbed through your eyeballs even if you are wearing a mask. There's different kinds of masks for different jobs, rarely do the cheap DIY shop masks actually cover your face properly, sometimes you need air pumped in externally to be safe. There are chemicals that will tear through your typical plastic disposable gloves. You don't have to go far to read stories of people passing out while spraying their car while wearing a mask but an inappropriate one or having exposed skin. I don't even have to go as far as the internet to find more minor cases where people have made themselves sick from exposing themselves when they shouldn't have, "I was coughing for the next week", "I had a headache for 3 days afterwards", "it took my eyes a month to recover", "I almost made myself blind when it got in my eyes, luckily there was an eye wash station nearby" or even just the annoying "my hands were stained for weeks".

No, it's not good to be paranoid, it's good to know what you're working with to be safe.... until you know what you're working with I think I'd prefer people to be paranoid than reckless

(also the mechanics I know who wear plastic gloves primarily do it to protect customer cars rather than protect their hands, they wear the gloves while working on something then take the gloves off before getting in to the car).

They may be less common, but for every handful of "my dad/mate/whatever did this for 30 years and was never sick a day of his life" stories there's a "my dad/mate/whatever got horribly sick after doing that without proper protection".

I agree with the general sentiment that we shouldn't be so scared of cancer that we don't ever do the things we enjoy, and a genetic predisposition is something that you have no control over anyways.

However, that said, I've known several people who have had cancer, mostly survivors, but one who sadly passed before 30, one in her sixties. My friend who was quite young was fit as a fiddle, a very active and sexy young lady, and she died of lung cancer that she contracted through a combination of pneumonia and particulates in tight spaces (she was an electrician at a university).

My point: had she not contracted pneumonia in her youth or had she worked a different job, she would be unlikely to have contracted lung cancer. It is no laughing matter. This is a horrible disease that's really hard on the individual and all the people around them who love them.

Should one give up doing things they enjoy? Probably not. That's like not skiing because you might have a fluke accident and suffer a debilitating injury, or not ever going on vacations overseas because an airplane might disappear into the ocean. I think (though I have no evidence) that the risk and exposure at the scale and quality of particulates to a hobbyist must be minute. But, it doesn't hurt to take reasonable precautions, right? Because, well, why not?

Remember that many of the substances, whether or not carcinogens, are respiratory irritants, when they're in the air. Even something as simple as sawdust is highly irritating.

I'd say that in this hobby, the most important time to wear a proper mask is if you airbrush -- I wear an N95 one, and I can see that my filters are totally discolored, even though I really don't airbrush that much.