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German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

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Re: German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

#31

Post by claudius »

bcohen5055 wrote: post #23

While in undergrad I spent about 5 years working with carbon fiber in a motorsports setting. I did a lot of cutting and sanding without a mask. There were weeks I would blow my nose 3 days after working on a part and still find black specks. I guess I'll find out in a few years...

According to the article, this is the actually “good” variant: Normally, the dust is getting caught in the nose and does not reach the lungs. However, these fibres break down during a fire at temperatures of 650°C and become much smaller. This smaller size allows them to enter the lungs and potentially cause havoc there.

Put another way, every “black speck” you found did not reach your lungs (although I doubt that this is particularly healthy, either…) :)

Re: German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

#32

Post by VLM »

exDM69 wrote: post #6

Formula 1 and other open wheel racing drivers have been exposed to carbon fiber dust (from the carbon-carbon brakes) for a few decades now. There is some research going on with former racing drivers. E.g. former F1 driver Mika Salo underwent surgery where his lungs were examined to assess the effects of repeated exposure to burned carbon fiber dust (this was several years ago). Unfortunately, I do not have any links…

One minor statistical problem is I googled around for mesothelioma and it looks like when tens of millions are exposed, roughly about thousands die per year, about 20-40 years after exposure. So if you have a population of maybe 1000 total drivers after thirty or so years you'll have maybe one die per year. Or so.

Another problem with the disease is the proverbial 18 year old apprentice steamfitter could die of lung cancer in his relatively young late 40s which is epidemiologically very interesting and easy to detect. There are some young 20-something F-1 drivers who are barely old enough to drink booze, but if a 40 year old driver finally today inhales "the" fiber that would kill him 40 years later, that is rather moot if he dies at 65 of a totally unrelated heart attack or 70 of an unrelated cancer.

So there are two problems: There are not many possible victims resulting in perhaps less than one cancer as a result, and some of the drivers are "really old" by SV programmer standards and the cancer is really slow to kill, so they'll die long before the cancer takes hold.

So... by analogy, if smoking pot will kill me from lung cancer in 30 years, that is rather motivational when told to 10 year olds, but I don't think it'll discourage many new social security recipients from taking up the pipe. In fact that sounds like a fun idea to me.

Re: German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

#33

Post by rjsw »

VLM wrote: post #32
exDM69 wrote: post #6

Formula 1 and other open wheel racing drivers have been exposed to carbon fiber dust (from the carbon-carbon brakes) for a few decades now. There is some research going on with former racing drivers. E.g. former F1 driver Mika Salo underwent surgery where his lungs were examined to assess the effects of repeated exposure to burned carbon fiber dust (this was several years ago). Unfortunately, I do not have any links…

One minor statistical problem is I googled around for mesothelioma and it looks like when tens of millions are exposed, roughly about thousands die per year, about 20-40 years after exposure. So if you have a population of maybe 1000 total drivers after thirty or so years you'll have maybe one die per year. Or so. Another problem with the disease is the proverbial 18 year old apprentice steamfitter could die of lung…

It won't just be drivers though, anyone in the pits will be exposed to brake dust, maybe even the spectators.

Re: German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

#34

Post by VLM »

rikacomet wrote: post #20

Though I'm all in to scientific development and the benefits of these new materials, I still want to point out, that nor carbon-fiber or graphene exist in nature in large quantities for more than one reason, while diamond and graphite do. Now the question should be .. why is that?

Another argument is on a total mass of carbon basis, diamond and graphite don't exist in nature in large quantities. Most of it is in the form of various boring minerals, coal, CO2, and living material. Refined pyrolytic graphite doesn't exactly wash up on shore and diamonds are very unusual on a tonnage basis.

I'm too lazy to run the exact numbers but its going to work out to something like a trainload of coal per diamond on a total mass of the earth basis.

Re: German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

#35

Post by simias »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #28
judk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely because they require complex structures processes to create, not just pressure and time and heat. "Danger to others" is not a factor in nature's selection process.

Danger to others that share a gene line IS part of natural selection. That's why most creatures don't cannibalize within their family/pack for instance.

That's not what the OP was talking about however. The fact that carbon fibers are not present in nature only tells us that we didn't have to evolve anything protecting us from it if it's really dangerous (since it was never a selection criteria). That doesn't mean it's necessarily harmful though.

Re: German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

#36

Post by drzaiusapelord »

chiph wrote: post #25

The USAF was concerned at one point that should an F-16 burn on a runway, it would release carbon-fiber strands which would float around the base and short out electrical equipment (communications gear, phone switch, power generation, etc). Seems like the concern was correct, but misplaced. We had a plane catch fire on a taxiway and burn, and no electrical mayhem resulted. Perhaps we should have worn our gas masks --…

Sounds like that they were aware of 'Soft Bomb' technology and were worried that an accidental soft bomb could go off via the F-16's fiber/composite materials burning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-114/B_%22Soft-Bomb%22

Interesting, that a plane from 1988 had warnings and concerns for a bomb that wouldn't be used until 1999. I wonder when the US first had one ready to go. What year was your experience?

Re: German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

#38

Post by VLM »

rjsw wrote: post #33
VLM wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One minor statistical problem is I googled around for mesothelioma and it looks like when tens of millions are exposed, roughly about thousands die per year, about 20-40 years after exposure. So if you have a population of maybe 1000 total drivers after thirty or so years you'll have maybe one die per year. Or so. Another problem with the disease is the proverbial 18 year old apprentice steamfitter could die of lung…

It won't just be drivers though, anyone in the pits will be exposed to brake dust, maybe even the spectators.

You are correct although it rapidly turns into a square/cube law scaling problem. I have spent many thousands of working hours fifteen miles downwind of a F1 track but the dilution factor is immense. Also time factors in that the track I work downwind of only races once a year but drivers work all year. (although there are minor races all year, which may involve CF material vehicles)

Mechanics specializing in brake work are likely at very high exposure and "should be" dying at a dramatically higher rate than drivers or anyone else. But I haven't heard of anything like that.

Re: German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

#39

Post by lifeisstillgood »

nodata wrote: post #16
exDM69 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall him telling (in a Finnish commentary for a F1 race broadcast) that he went to another surgery to examine the carbon fiber dust in his lungs. But this was almost 10 years ago, I can't remember the specifics.

Can you wash the carbon fiber dust out of the lungs?

Washing air-breathing lungs with water sounds problematic, although with fluro-carbons and the prevalence of lung cancer I am not going to say no-one hasn't tried !

Re: German armed forces warn that carbon fiber might be cancer-causing

#40

Post by chiph »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #36
chiph wrote: post #25

The USAF was concerned at one point that should an F-16 burn on a runway, it would release carbon-fiber strands which would float around the base and short out electrical equipment (communications gear, phone switch, power generation, etc). Seems like the concern was correct, but misplaced. We had a plane catch fire on a taxiway and burn, and no electrical mayhem resulted. Perhaps we should have worn our gas masks --…

Sounds like that they were aware of 'Soft Bomb' technology and were worried that an accidental soft bomb could go off via the F-16's fiber/composite materials burning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-114/B_%22Soft-Bomb%22 Interesting, that a plane from 1988 had warnings and concerns for a bomb that wouldn't be used until 1999. I wonder when the US first had one ready to go. What year was your experience?

1983-85 at Hahn. We were the first base in USAFE to get the F-16 (A & B models).

Now it's a civilian airport where RyanAir tricks people into thinking they're flying into Frankfurt -- an additional 90-minute bus ride away (there's a reason why the airfare is so cheap!)

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