Safety information on brake cleaners

[FVRacer21]

Have I learned this too late(posted to my blog 3/1/2020)

Note - Links in this post are for information only and do not imply endorsement.

Sometimes in life you trust too much or don't dig enough. That is my issue with chemicals we use every day. I trust that the regulations are studied and enforced in a way that protects people and lets them make the decisions they need to protect themselves.

That is until I listened to a radio broadcast on TCE, a chemical that has been linked to fetal heart defects, and other diseases such as cancer.

TCE (tetrathloroethylene) is a chemical that is used in cleaning and degreasing. It is at the center of the Camp Lejeune tragedy, where our military families were exposed to toxic drinking water from the 50's through the early 80's. But it is not just here that there was a problem. Since this chemical was used by dry cleaners, even in the town of Torrington, where I live, many wells were closed up and changed over to city water due to ground contamination (not just by TCE) from dry cleaning establishments.

How does it affect me and my friends? I was/am an auto mechanic and racing mechanic. I use brake cleaning chemicals, some of which might contain TCE or a derivative of this, perthloroethylene. Now this is found in Chlorinated brake cleaner, which has been used for many years. Recently, Non-Chlorinated brake cleaner has come on the market. This does not have TCE in it, in fact Chlorinated brake cleaner is banned for sale in California. My mistake was believing the only change in the product was the propellant, and not the chemicals itself.

When I started as a mechanic, back in the 70's, brake cleaner was not heard of. We would wash down brake parts with Safety-Kleen solvent or even gasoline (not that that is probably any better as it had lead in it at the time....) Brake cleaner first came out in gallon cans that we loaded into pressurized spray bottles; only after I had left the trade full time did the spray cans come into being.

It was a miracle product, where before you had to take something apart and clean it in a tank, now you just hit it with some brake cleaner and you were done. There was no training or instruction besides the small print on the cans - and we know how good we are about reading those.

The other thing about Chlorinated brake cleaner is that when heated past 315 degrees Celsius (about 600 F) it can produce a deadly gas - Phosgen - which can seriously hurt or kill you. Think of the times you were heating a bolt and then hit it with a chemical, like a brake cleaner or something like WD-40, if it was red hot then it was definitely hotter that that.

Now, it is proven that Chlorinated brake cleaner performs better that Non-Chlorinated. The question is how much better and is the difference worth your health? That is for you to decide. For most people, if they use the brake cleaner is a well ventilated area, and use proper protection like gloves, then you have minimized the risk. However, that goes for ANY chemical that is man made.

For those who are using this product in a commercial setting I urge you to look at the information and either change what you are using or put in place safeguards and train for you and your employees. For the hobbyist the same advise holds.

Now the previous administration was about to strictly regulate this chemical as California has done. The current administration is rolling back regulations, specifically TCE.

Many chemicals have improved our lives, and to not balance the benefits vs the side effects would be foolish. But we should demand transparency from our government and the manufacturers of these chemicals.

ChrisZ

[Rick Kirchner]

It would be interesting to understand the exposure limits and risk factors.

I never used it much in my younger years, although when I was a kid, cleaning paint brushes and such was the realm of leaded gasoline, which was 1/4 the price of paint thinner, worked faster, and actually dried out of the brushes. Along with the used motor oil, we disposed of it along the chain-link fence lines to kill weeds (weed whackers had not been invented). I wonder what digging along the fences of my childhood home might show today.....

A high-school girlfriend's dad was burned to death (professional painter) when the vapor from his can of brush-cleaning gas migrated under a stud wall into a compartment where there was a water heater that he didn't know about.

When I moved to Cali chlorinated brake cleaner was a still available. Then the ban came and the new mix. It's methanol and acetone and frankly, useless. Acetone is bad from the standpoint that it easily provides transport across the skin/blood barrier, a good reason to avoid acetone clean-up of epoxies. Ended up in the hospital after getting a huge shot of the acetone/methanol mix straight to the eyes. Don't know if the chlorinated stuff would be any worse, but I can attest to the new stuff being pretty bad from that aspect.

I think the ban started as part of the ozone depleting chemicals issue. Cali has some other interesting rules along these lines - you pay a $10 "deposit" on every can of refrigerant and the empty can has to be returned within days or you forfeit it - this is supposed to encourage people to fix leaky AC systems as opposed to just topping them off.

I have to admit to buying a couple of cases of cans and a gallon of liquid chlorinated cleaners whenever I go to Arizona. I figure with the good stuff I actually use less of it, but obviously I'm not using it at commercial rates like in a professional shop.

When I was a young engineer we had an interesting machine at work that used chlorinated solvents. It was a vapor-phase degreaser used to wash circuit boards. There was a chamber in the bottom that held the solvent. it was heated until the solvent boiled (which I believe was barely over 100 deg). You would put you stuff in a basket and drop it into the solvent. A couple feet above the top of the solvent there was a cooling coil that circulated freon at about 35 deg f. The cold air would sink and produce a small version of an air inversion. As you pulled your parts out the solvent condensed in the cold and ran right off. There was very little left on the parts once you got past the coils, and as it hit the 70 deg factory air evaporated instantly. I can think of how to build one of those now that would re-cycle all the solvent with very little loss.