Is Spray Foam Insulation as Safe as Advertised?

Maybe safe, but probably not, unless properly applied and cured. That's the rub.

The only place I'd let foam be used is on a roof, outside the house.

If your foam is 7 years old all the bad stuff is probably gone by now.

The real bad stuff was TDI (tolylene diisiocynate). That is not supposed to be used any more, but who knows.

Any imbalance of components can cause problems. These systems MUST be properly mixed and this happens at the nozzle and can easily be thrown off by any number of things.

Untrained operators, unmaintained equipment, cheap foam from overseas (name of country of origin withheld, but it's a big country)

My eye went straight to this having been "poisoned" by TDI c1980 (and sacked for malingering upon return from sick leave - Ah the good old days) (it only took 30 years for the asthma to clear up).

TDI could be described as having a "fish-like odour" - not sure about the odour of amines though i.e. they may be more "fish-like" than TDI.

I still have COPD, thanks to my days of using it in the aerospace industry, about that same time.

I'd start wheezing, "for no reason". Finally, I figured it out. When I told a co-worker he just said, "Oh yea, didn't anybody tell you not to breathe the fumes"?

Same with MEK. Nobody made us wear gloves when we washed parts in it. That was in the 70s.

For what little it is worth, the cheapest way to fill a 24 hour news cycle is with sensational, scary stories. You and get days and days of copy out of one--- and not report an ounce of truth.

Pete

Pete,

Are you suggesting that there may not be some truth to the reported accounts?

Or, are you just being a contrary troll?

Based on your last two ridiculous posts, I'm going with troll.

Don't mean to be contentious, but I suppose I am. Maybe that is why no one will play with me.

In reality, I have no way to gauge the extent of the problem. I believe, based on observation of the various media, that we are very unlikely to get much truth or technical data from Dr. Phil, Oz, Barbara Walters or the cast of "The Chew". I wish it weren't so.

Pete

Well, my reality is that I worked with pour-in-place foam years ago and was made sick by exposure to the gas generated by the reaction.

The spray-in-place foams used today may have a different chemical make-up, I don't know. I can believe that they are incorrectly mixed, applied and misused in any number of ways in the name of profit. They may have the bad stuff in them, if imported from certain countries. Remember tainted drywall from China and the FEMA trailers that were toxic?

I can't imagine why anybody would expect to get, "technical data from Dr. Phil, Oz, Barbara Walters or the cast of "The Chew".

Finally, it's no problem, if it happens to someone else.

I used to work with a fellow who sprayed foam as a second job. From his description, most of the foam crews were untrained and unsupervised kids. His funniest story was a crew who were smoking and drinking and didn't realize they had misplaced the nozzle and foamed an entire room full.

In one of my jobs, we had the problem of holding patient's heads very securely. Since these were outpatients we couldn't use screws, and my attempt at a very large, multiple-screw C-clamp led to the test victim subject threatening to kill me. We came up with the idea of foaming their heads in place, but a review by the safety and insurance folks killed that idea. The list of damages you could do with just a slight screw-up was appalling.

When I put the two observations together, I would be careful of spray foam. Like Lyn, I'm not sure what the outgasses are these days, but there ought to be an MSDS for this stuff (we pay the government to print those sheets, so it makes sense to read 'em), and there are some decent gas detection folks who can test for most stuff.

It seems like good stuff if it's done right, but that might be the trick.

"we had the problem of holding patient's heads very securely"
You should have tried the race car seat method of nestling the head or hand into a plastic bag full of polystyrene beads then suck all of the air out to make it rigid.

I wouldn't use it in Orlando either. The economy of Disney and Orlando is very dependent upon a healthy mouse. Every one knows that the foam causes cancer in mice.

According to AH, that's only in California mice.

What DOESN'T cause cancer in California?

I'm beginning to think it's not all these substances (including common sandlot/beach sand) that are detrimental to health, it's LIVING IN CALIFORNIA that is hazardous, the first sign is a complete loss of common sense.

(I know there's a serious lack of common sense in the other 59 states (and don't get me started on DC, somehow they're in the NEGATIVES when it comes to common sense, how can you literally have less sense than an inanimate, brainless rock?), but please don't point that out to me right now. A) I'm trying to make a statement here, and B) it's too early in the morning for me to Stare Too Long Into The Abyss Of Awful Truth.)

Would you recommend the organic, free-range foam?

The only 'organic, free-range foam' I can think of is Sea Foam, and that's basically when the local concentration of, ... let's just call it 'fish wee' to be polite, when the concentration of fish wee gets high enough to act as a surfactant. I'm not sure I want that stuff in my house, besides, it doesn't last too long once it starts drying out.

As far as safety, there fire ratings to consider.

It does really depend on the constituents of the foam, the installation and where it is used.

Most urethanes use polyols, esters and/ or epoxidized oils (often vegetable) to form the structure of the foam. However, aromatics may be incorporated, possibly for fire inhibition purposes. The real danger is from the cross linking agents and improper proportions or uneven mixing can create a hazard. Also, (IMHO) I would catious about using them somewhere exposed to high heat (including radiant heat) as the result could cause accelerated breakdown of the material.

As in all resin type materials there is a potential hazard to people. Some people do not get affected, where others have violent reactions. Epoxy can cause cancer and dermatitis to some, and others, nothing.

Any product is as safe as the manufacturer will tell you. The onus then comes on you to ensure it is safe for you to use. Look at Dow Corning and Teflon non stick coatings on pans. Wonderful product, they just did not tell you that it kills you and I understand they knew way back in the 1950's when they invented it, that the gases kills you.

You have to ask, is anything safe for human use these days! If not, what can you tolerate.

Teflon® was accidentally discovered by DuPont chemist, Dr. Roy J. Plunkett.

Don't burn it and breathe the fumes and you'll be OK.

Thanks Lyn for correcting me. I must secretly love Dow Corning products. Du Pont was whom I meant to state. Bust head syndrome today, even having t do spell checking this day.

Cheers for that correction.

"Don't burn it and breathe the fumes and you'll be OK."

This non-stick stuff is great, but it's toxic when burned. Let's put it on cookware, the one thing in the average home that gets burned on a regular basis!

Brrriliant! *clinks pints of Guinnes*

Just to add a little fuel to the fire. it's not pure TFE on those pans. It's a mixture of TFE and polyphenylene oxide.

Sometimes the burning of teflon is accidental. Astronauts have died from exposure to teflon fumes caused by creep of teflon insulation in electronic wiring.

Which ones????

Specifically, Gus Grisson, Edward White ll, and Roger Chaffee died on Jan. 27,1967 as the result of an oxygen fuled fire cause by over heating of electrical wiring insulated with teflon

The real fault was working in an environment of 100% oxygen.

I don't think any commission ever pinpointed the source of the ignition, much less faulting PTFE as a cause. Electric arcs were cited as the cause, but the exact source was never found.

If anything, PTFE wire insulation is a far, far better material than your typical PVC insulation due to its much higher melting point compared to other insulations.

I work with PTFE insulated wires daily and the process to strip this insulation is much more difficult than standard PVC, but the higher melting point provides a crucial advantage to minimize the chance of on-board fire due to wire insulation ignition in mission critical environments.

Autopsy reports stated that all three astronauts died due to asphyxiation of carbon monoxide and subsequent cardiac arrest. However, the nylon suits also played a roll in baking the astronauts in their own sweat, making the whole thing extremely painful.

In a pure oxygen environment, just about everything burns, including the teflon!!

I looked it upon Wiki and it appears more than slightly different to your thoughts, maybe you could source your comments for us here, thanks in advance.

I cut down the Wiki text (dramatically, so read the whole article please) to the following "bits"...:-

Although the ignition source could not be conclusively identified, the astronauts' deaths were attributed to a wide range of lethal design and construction flaws in the early Apollo Command Module.

------------------------------------------------

In a spacecraft review meeting held with Shea on August 19, 1966 (a week before delivery), the crew expressed concern about the amount of flammable material (mainly nylon netting and Velcro) in the cabin, which the technicians found convenient for holding tools and equipment in place. Though Shea gave the spacecraft a passing grade, after the meeting they gave him a crew portrait they had posed with heads bowed and hands clasped in prayer, with the inscription:

It isn't that we don't trust you, Joe, but this time we've decided to go over your head.

Shea gave his staff orders to tell North American to remove the flammables from the cabin, but did not supervise the issue personally.

--------------------------------------------------

Because of the large strands of melted nylon fusing the astronauts to the cabin interior, removing the bodies took nearly 90 minutes.

----------------------------------------------------

The autopsy report confirmed that the primary cause of death for all three astronauts was cardiac arrest caused by high concentrations of carbon monoxide. Burns suffered by the crew were not believed to be major factors, and it was concluded that most of them had occurred postmortem. Asphyxiation happened after the fire melted the astronauts' suits and oxygen tubes, exposing them to the lethal atmosphere of the cabin.

---------------------------------------------------

They noted a silver-plated copper wire running through an environmental control unit near the center couch had become stripped of its Teflon insulation and abraded by repeated opening and closing of a small access door. This weak point in the wiring also ran near a junction in an ethylene glycol/water cooling line which had been prone to leaks. The electrolysis of ethylene glycol solution with the silver anode was a notable hazard which could cause a violent exothermic reaction, igniting the ethylene glycol mixture in the CM's corrosive test atmosphere of pure, high-pressure oxygen.

--------------------------------------------------

With an electroscope, they measured the approximate energy of static discharges caused by a test crew dressed in nylon flight pressure suits and reclining on the nylon flight seats. The MIT investigators repeatedly found sufficient energy for ignition was discharged when crew-members shifted in their seats and then touched the spacecraft's aluminum panels.

--------------------------------------------------

The review board cited "many types and classes of combustible material" close to ignition sources. The NASA crew systems department had installed 34 square feet (3.2 m²) of Velcro throughout the spacecraft, almost like carpeting. This Velcro was found to be flammable in a high-pressure 100% oxygen environment. Up to 70 pounds of other non-metallic flammable materials had also crept into the design.

-------------------------------------------------

The plugs-out test had been run to simulate the launch procedure, with the cabin pressurized with pure oxygen at the nominal pre-launch level of 16.7 psi (1.15 bar), 2 psi above standard sea level atmospheric pressure. This is more than five times the 3 psi partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere, and provides an environment in which materials not normally considered highly flammable will burst into flame.

-------------------------------------------------

The loss of some teflon insulation may have allowed a spar to start a fire, but nowhere does it say that it caused poisoning....there was many lbs of flammable velcro and other stuff for example.....

Teflon is used in cooking pots, it can handle extremely high temperatures.

Taken from the Wiki article:-it blames carbon monoxide poisoning causing cardiac arrest.....thankfully very quickly it would appear!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1

Teflon at extremely high temperatures can cause cancer and other dangerous illnesses, but it would not kill in the time frames of the Apollo fire. See here:-

Teflon is a form of PTFE gas which can cause severe edematous pneumonia. This causes the hemorrhaging of the lungs which results in the body drowning by its own bodily fluids. The condition is caused when breathing in the fumes and is known as 'polymer fume fever'. The symptoms include shortness of breath, malaise, chest tightness, chills, cough, sore throat and high temperature. It is also a potential carcinogen (it is in animals); translation - it may cause cancer.

I would appreciate seeing your source for your comments about Teflon, thanks in advance.

"...thankfully very quickly it would appear!!"

I remember talking with famed racer Derek Bell about two years ago at dinner and he stated that the biggest fear for race drivers in the 1970s was fire.

The problem was that even though the suits they wore were flame retardant, they would literally roast you in your own sweat in a very painful way.

The suits the astronauts wore were nylon, which not induces the same sweat-roasting problem that those old racing suits created, but nylon easily melts and sticks to everything (including skin).

The screaming inside Apollo 1 was not caused by noxious fumes or carbon monoxide, but a very agonizing length of time as extreme heat swept through that capsule in a pure O2 environment.

I know in house fires most people die from inhaling combustable products and super-heated air. That air literally sears the whole inner linings of the lungs rendering them painfully useless while they also fill with fluid. I am not sure about the situation inside Apollo 1, but I suspect that the gases inside that capsule quickly reached a super-heated state.

I found your statement really strange after reading the article, and mostly unsupported by it:- "The screaming inside Apollo 1 was not caused by noxious fumes or carbon monoxide,"

It was stated in the article "Cardiac arrest due to intensive Carbon Monoxide inhalation".

So tell us what really happened.....

This was even without a pure oxygen atmosphere!!

Still most painful and terrifying. Pleanty of reasons to scream, I know I would have!!

But probably both due to the poisonous nature of the gas and the extreme temperature it was at.....remember even high temperature air, breathed in, sears the lungs and is a common cause of very rapid death. That hot gas would have surely been even faster.....certainly no slower....

You probably did not read the whole article, but it would appear that each was dead in an extremely short period of time (thank God).....10s of seconds rather even than minutes....but even one second would have been agonizing......

From wiki:-

The transmission then ended abruptly at 6:31:21, only 17 seconds after the first report of fire. The cabin had ruptured due to rapidly expanding gases from the fire, which over-pressurized the Command Module to 29 psi (2.0 bar).

---------------------------

The initial phase of the fire lasted only about 15 seconds before the Command Module's hull ruptured. As the cabin depressurized, the convective rush of air caused the flames to spread rapidly, beginning the second phase. The third phase began when most of the atmosphere was consumed. At this point, the fire largely stopped, but massive amounts of smoke, dust, carbon monoxide, and fumes now filled the cabin.

----------------------------

I just do not understand either the comment you made, or the reasons behind it, unless you are privy to other information sources. If so,please cite. Thanks in advance.

Another source I found stated after the fire started " Less than a minute later all three had perished."

You can read that here:-

Apollo-1-crew

We basically only have the sources I quoted from. If you have others, please post here, thanks.

I also found this article about how quickly seared lungs can kill, you cannot scream but once!:-

NY region/fire-in-the-bronx-death-in-seconds-toxins-or-a-searing-flashover-suspected

In the scheme of things, exposure to burning teflon, which was used because of it's excellent resistance to friction, which cause shorts and fires in wires, seems to be a lesser evil than dying form the poor prognosis for anyone caught in space in a burning capsule. That is like getting thrown out of an airplane and worrying about not being properly dressed for the reception.

Is the recognition of context a skill?

I worked as an Apollo subcontractor during this period. After performing a root cause analysis of the accident, NASA concluded that it was caused by teflon insulation. Teflon has low coefficient of friction and wonderful electrical properties, but lousy creep resistance. When virgin teflon is under mechanical load, its terrible creep properties will cause failures in fairly short order. This is why you will not find virgin teflon used in wiring any more. It's either a creep resistant polymer, or a hard coating over the teflon.

I agree it was probably the "catalyst" for the accident, but it did not kill the crew directly by becoming a poisonous gas.

If you can supply a source that maintains that, it would help....just saying it carries little weight against the massive amount of information available online...

It was a probable fire starter as it simply allowed a wire (that it should have been insulating), to cause a spark to ignite flammable stuff in a pure oxygen environment! Probably starting with the leaky alcohol pipe....right beside it!!

Have you ever used pure oxygen or made tests using it. I did in my school days....its really dangerous!! Surprisingly for me as an 11 year old...

My Father had a lot of (very negative) experience in Turkey in WW2 with the locals filling (how is still a mystery!) the wrong gas (Acetylene) cylinders with oxygen.

The wrongly filled cylinders killed several people before the cause was found. My Father built a remote control system to "crack" the questionable cylinder valve behind sand bags 100 meters away, if it was Oxygen in an Acetylene cylinder, it would immediately explode....if it didn't, it was Acetylene!!

I believe (someone here will know) that the valves on Oxygen may not be lubricated with oil or grease, but Acetylene can (then?).....

I say personally that it is the single most dangerous gas around in very common usage, it reacts with almost everything.

If it wasn't for all the other gases "diluting" it here on earth, we would not be here!!! By volume, dry air contains 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases.

Oxygen is a chemical element with symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group on the periodic table and is a highly reactive nonmetallic element and oxidizing agent that readily forms compounds (notably oxides) with most elements

From Wiki.

Maybe that is why we mainly insulate houses with big blocks of fire resistant foam insulation on the outside and then cover it with rendering for a good optical appearance. I had mine done about 8 years ago, great in summer and winter....cut our fuel bills to something less than a quarter of what they were at the time....

While looking back at our gas bills (we have a gas cylinder in the garden!), I found out that we pay out less for heating and hot water now than we did in 1986!!! and that is NOT taking inflation into account!!!

I have never seen anyone here spraying on insulation.....but I did find a company on the web that offer it for lofts and similar here....I am now suitably warned, thanks.

During the late 70's and early 80's Borden Chemical was field testing foam in place Urea-Formaldehyde insulation. The also tried Phenol-Formaldehyde insulation. These are regularly the glues for plywood laminating, particle board and MDF. They did this to open up another market for their Formaldehyde production. At that time they were the second largest supplier of Formaldehyde.

Everything went well until one mouse out of about 1,000 mice and rats died in testing from the formaldehyde vapors. Formaldehyde was then put on the suspected carcinogen list and the foam product components were pulled off the market. One problem for them was the off gassing, for quite a long time, of the formaldehyde vapors. As always, the legal sharks got ahold of this and went into litigation where Borden lost much money. Borden eventually paid for the removal of the original installations and replacement installations.

One very big problem for some owners of test sites was that they were Borden Chemical employees. They were the last ones for remediation but many had to move out until the work was completed. Not all foams are as safe as advertised. Make sure the product you contemplate using has plenty of prior testing in actual installations.

Some other foams are made from Iso-cyanates, a family of chemicals that are very hazardous. The Bhopal incident occurred because of one of them, methyl isocynate. The one usually used is toluene diisocyanate, a less but still dangerous chemical. It is mixed with polyols or other hydroxyl materials. This is the method that urethane and its products are made. Due to the off gassing of the resultant finished material's vapors are given off and can be uncomfortable or hazardous to breath. This is why activated carbon cartridge air purifying respirators or supplied air respirators are always used during the installation. The by-products are usually very slow in off gassing simply due to the characteristics of the chemicals and since they are almost always encased in dry wall sheets, wood and vapor barriers.

The use of these products is some what of an experimental use. There are many things not known when they are introduced that seem to become known as the foam ages. Personally, I would not want to be a guinea pig. I would not use any of them in my residence until the product had been in use for at least ten years and pertinent information becomes available. There are to many things that could be potential problems from the raw materials, shipping, mixing and installation, and the effects of aging.

There are many potential sources of the smells you are experiencing.

Good Luck, Old Salt

UREA Formaldehyde (UFF) foam insulation was developed more than half a century ago and hailed as an energy saving miracle. It was subsequently accused of causing all kinds of medical problems. I knew people whose homes were condemned and forced to be torn down because they used this stuff. Today, the problem and the law has changed. Your home is safe, and if you have any doubt, you can have it tested.

Aren't we getting a bit paranoid these days?

My wife and I often reminisce and remember when we were kids we would:

1. Scrape at painted windows which we now know had lead in it.

2. Drink from plastic hoses

3. Sit in rooms where the adults were all smoking

4. Ride in cars with out seat belts and of course, no car seats

5. In science class we would be given a few drops of mercury to roll around on our hand

6. Eat apples from orchards using DDT - heck I even helped farmers dust the crops with it

7. Get the dickens burnt out of us at the start of summer every year to get that out of the way and start a good tan

8. Use clocks with radium painted dials

I could go on, but you get the picture. so far, we seem to have no side effects.

Me too.

Couldn't agree with you more!

In a recent blog about cleanliness, I read about all the "absolute" cleanliness measures that some contributors take to avoid any detrimental effects of type. No, I'm clean but don't think the world has to be absolutely clean and sterile. For example:

1. Know that green mold that forms on outdated bread? Yes it is the source of penicillin. Its the same bread that went stale in the refrigerator because you didn't eat enough sandwiches or French toast.

2. The gila monster lizard's spit is the source of Byetta, a medicine for type 2 diabetes. No, I wouldn't kiss a gila monster on the mouth but diabetes suffers like the end result.

There are many other examples.

In the instance of the testing of Formaldehyde for carcinogenic properties it was a laugh. The normal tolerable (smell) level of formaldehyde is 1ppm in manufacturing plants where it is made. The PEL (permissible exposure limit) is 0.75 ppm on a 8 hour exposure. IDLH (immediately dangerous to life and health) is 100ppm. STEL (short term exposure limit) is 2ppm for a 15 minute exposure. The nice and rats were exposed to levels that we would think would immediately kill us. They were exposed for 24 hours/day at levels from 0.0 ppm up to and beyond the IDLH of 100ppm. One rodent out of hundreds and the panic button was hit. The testers refused to do a retest no matter who paid for it. The Formaldehyde Institute was offering to pay but the testers insisted that the one in many results were valid and would stand. Compare that with the exposure embalmers used to get!

Oh also, I don't use SPF 500 when I go out in the sun. I take my shirt off to get an even tan!

Good Luck, Old Salt