I had a couple of interesting phone conversations today as I was calling around trying to suss out the severity of the apparent toluene clampdown. It is way worse than I thought, if one guy I was talking to at a paint store knows what he's talking about.

He said that it isn't just in my state, but is a national thing (federal law apparently) that they are doing and shutting down sales of most VOC/hydrocarbon solvents. It's not just toluene they're banning, but xylene, naphtha and MEK as well! All that is "permitted" to be retailed now (at least for retail/industrial use) are acetone, paint thinner, maybe a couple of other dirty mixes, and denatured alcohol. This actually conforms with what I've seen recently in forays to hardware stores of all types to see what I could find---toluene, xylene, naphtha and MEK were all missing from the shelves. He said it took effect Jan 1, 2011.

Now, this isn't to say there still aren't some of these solvents out there in places; there are, and that's because businesses are allowed to sell their existing stock. But they won't be able to get more once that's gone, I guess.

The paint store guy even said at one point "they're also used to make crank and speed," but he said it as an afterthought and didn't seem to think this was the main reason behind the ban. I'm not so sure... when has the government really been so concerned about the environment? They allow it to be trashed by various industries in so many other ways, this explanation seems shaky at best to me.  The government is worried about air pollution...? Oh really?

Anyway I found some at a paint store, and bought it. It was among the last few gallons they had. I hope the quality isn't too crappy. But after leaving the store I looked more closely at the label and it said it contained not just toluene, but benzene too. Ugh. I'm guessing very small amounts, like 1% or less, since I'm pretty sure it's a more expensive fraction than toluene.

So my question is, how bad is that? I'd have to be much more careful not to breathe any or get it on me, I know that much. I contacted the manufacturer in an effort to get a MSDS or otherwise find out how much benzene is in there, but that turned into a clusterfuck because the company that made it and is on the label was sold to another company a few years ago, and when I finally got an MSDS off them, it said that xylene, not benzene, is the secondary in there and is at 0.1% to 1%. I'm hoping that the benzene is only in there at less than 1% but there's no way to know without an accurate MSDS.

What I just read about benzene on Wikipedia is scary as fuck, and makes me want to take it back and get my money back. I think I am going to go take it back...

By the same token I heard tell of a person using mouth pipettes to siphon up aliquots of benzene....died of leukaemia later.

We old timers used benzene for mundane work such as cleaning motorcycle parts and many other purposes as well    It's still present in gasoline, but isolating it would require rather expensive equipment    If you want to remove any residual benzene it's already been discussed elsewhere:

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=15838#pid204811

 

Regarding the "ban": well it was actually more than one retailer relating this to me on the phone. More like three. Then when I was at the paint store that sold me the toluene + benzene, the guy pointed at a bulletin about it that was taped to his counter, but I didn't want to look too hard at it and thereby look too unusually interested. I did glance though and it was official-looking and mentioned toluene, xylene, MEK and naphtha---all the same ones that someone else on the phone had mentioned, and the same ones I can no longer find in any of the hardware stores in my area. There is something to this, I'm going to do some research to find out what it is. I have a feeling it may be a west coast thing only and the guy who said it was national may have been wrong.

Interestingly, the guy at the paint store ended up asking me as he was ringing it up "whatcha gonna use it for"? I was totally ready with an answer about custom guitar painting, but the fact that he asked me that told me that he had at least a little suspicion. I look like a musician, not at all like a handyman or blue collar worker, which I know was part of it.

I know there's a very good chance that if I use this stuff I won't get cancer from it, but the main thing to me is the mindfuck of it... I don't want to be tripping whenever I'm handling it, and worrying... it's not worth it. Toluene doesn't freak me out. If I breathe a little bit or get a droplet on me here or there, no big deal. Same with DCM. I'm careful, but not completely paranoid. After what I read about benzene being able to mutate DNA at 1 ppm, I won't be able to handle it the way I want to. When I'm doing extractions I don't want to have to feel like I'm on a tightrope.

Okay I just found something about it. It's only a California thing... the guy who told me it was national was obviously mistaken:

http://earth911.com/news/2009/10/02/california-bans-vocs-costs-of-some-products-will-rise/

California Bans VOCs, Costs of Some Products Will Rise

by Trey Granger
Published on October 2nd, 2009

The California Air Resources Board (ARB) is cracking down on products that contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as aerosol air fresheners and paint thinners, and is imposing a ban on high-VOC products starting in 2014.

Here’s a simple breakdown of how the regulation will work, courtesy of the Associated Press:

- Manufacturers will have to limit VOC content to 30 percent of the product’s weight by 2010
- The number would drop to 3 percent on January 1, 2014
- Any reformulated products cannot substitute “gases that contribute to global warming” in order to achieve VOC reduction

The expected impact of this law is two-fold:

1. It will prevent more than 14 tons of VOCs from entering the air daily. VOCs have been linked to asthma and cancer, as well as contributing to smog.

2. When manufacturers re-formulate products to comply with the standards, consumers will notice in their pocket books. The ARB estimates that the price of a gallon of paint thinner will increase by $1.50 under the new law, although the cost of air fresheners is not expected to rise.

California has been targeting VOC emissions since it signed The California Clean Air Act in 1988. The ARB reports that in the past 21 years, VOC emissions have dropped by 44 percent.

Industry representatives are already questioning whether they have enough time to safely comply with the mandates. In reality, the response will have to be even quicker, as Southern California is imposing the new restrictions starting in 2011 under a separate rule.

One material where VOC content has already been addressed is paint. Most paint manufacturers now offer low or no-VOC options, in part because of state laws that enforced VOC standards. In that case as well, California was the first state to take action.

While reducing the VOC quantity of products may improve air quality, it has little impact on disposal. Products such as aerosol sprays and paint thinners are still considered hazardous, meaning many states prevent them from disposal in landfills.
[end]

Sorry guys, I shouldn't have believed the crap about it being national. Vesp, any chance you could change the thread title to something else? I don't want this thread to go on alarming people in the future. You could make it say "VOC solvent ban in California" or something.

This is one major aspect of California that is really annoying---always first to jump in disruptively banning things and regulating things.

Fractal, do you mean Sunnyside, not Sunshine? I've seen Sunnyside a lot back 10 years ago, but haven't seen it at all currently, and I've never seen a brand called Sunshine. I have had bad experience with Sunnyside. I recall one time getting some of their acetone and it had an obvious contaminant in it, alarmingly noxious... it smelled totally different from Klean Strip or any other brand of acetone I'd ever used. I'm not sorry that they seem to be gone.

Anyway, I found a source online for straight Toluol, so I'm just going to order that, and take this benzene-polluted crap back today. I'm going to have enough concerns about toxicity without adding that big one!

California should also ban scissors because someone might run while carrying a pair.

i don't understand how they could ban hydrocarbons even on a state level.  they're too widely used, people rely on them heavily for legit use.  i don't understand how Cali can do that

NPH, I haven't come across the actual underlying regs yet, but when I do I have a feeling I'll find that it applies to retail stuff, not industrial acquisition. In other words, Joe Blow Consumer or Joe Painter who have to buy their stuff from hardware stores are out of luck, but people who work for companies who order their materials from business-to-business outfits may still be able to get their hands on it. This is just a guess though.

I'm with you, I'm amazed that this isn't causing a massive revolt. Even the paint store guys were griping to me that the "low-VOC alternative" solvents being pushed are garbage and they're not even bothering to stock them.

The regs seem to be aimed at paints and their thinners, and the push toward zero-VOC paints, which is all fine, but aren't there a hundred other things that people use solvents like toluene for besides paint thinning/removal...?

this is just my 2 cents, strictly opinion, but i think this apparent california VOC solvent ban would be environment-related and not drug-related.  i mean Texas is the craziest when it comes to drug chemistry laws and i would think they'd be the first in line to push new drug chem-related laws down everyone's throats.  i think the government's plan is not to ban everything related to drugs, rather to just ban the popular precursors that are found in the field.  toluene has gotten very hard to find nationwide and is seen as "drug-related" more-so than xylene, etc, because toluene has the ability to be a precursor itself.  i have very little interest in using toluene as a precursor b/c i'm not interested in the end products so i do very little reading on it... but amphetamine and 4-methylmethcathinone come to mind.  of course i think it's by far the former rather than the latter that gave it the status of being a precursor.  the only mention i know of using toluene for 4-mmc was from the bee who re-discovered the stuff many moons ago.  i can't recall his name.

Shit, in my current house & in my last house (and in a lot of houses I've lived in) the walls and the ceilings were made of asbestos sheeting. I've lived places where the amount of asbestos in the dust is several thousand times the mandated limit and which have regular dust storms. I've also done a torts exam in a school building which had a sign on the door saying enter at own risk, this building contains asbestos (ironic indeed), you could actually see the loose fibers between the asbestos sheeted ceiling and the tin roof. I've also sucked down enough volatile organics from the pyrolysis of carpet, linoleum, paint, varnish, plastics, etc. that I'm either hell likely to develop cancer or immune to it. Fuck it, we've all got to die of something and some of the people I've seen live the longest used volatile organics every day of their lives in parts-washers.

The second biggest killer-cancer in this Country now is bowel cancer, that comes from 2 things, the reduction in lung-cancer rates and the massive increase in the number of 20-30 year olds who have never eaten any dietary fiber (processed food diets, fiber free breakfast, fiber free lunch and fiber free dinner = bowel cancer rising rapidly in the 20-30 year old bracket). What chemicals are they going to ban to stop that shit (pardon the pun)? Between that and Type II diabetes (predominantly caused by obesity and rising rapidly in the 25-35 year old bracket), not many people are going to live long enough to give Volatile Organic Solvents a chance to do a job on 'em. S'pose it's way easier to blame nasty chemicals than diet and laziness, really, you can't call people disgusting fat slobs then expect them to vote for y'all.

I suspect that maybe the reason I've survived is my heavy use of cannabis since I was 16-17 years old. I believe in the medical evidence pointing strongly to the anti-tumorgenic effects of cannabinoids

 you are not alone there! I know many Religous smokers of weed, who's lifestyles Surely should have killed them by now!

 A topic worthy if its own thread---"How smoking Pot saved my Life!"  

Pretty soon I think I will have to get back on it just for the protective effects, as I'm getting a little worried that I'm letting myself hang out there unprotected now.

Lol! you're gonna get SO smashed

 Cheers matey, hyppy