Yes. I can understand the scepticism about the information from companies that sell the stuff but if you don't believe them then search out the independent scientific research behind the products.
Factsheet to look at to find relevant terms (they claim the half life is 9 days)
https://www.pinkbatts.co.nz/assets/Customer-Safety-Fact-Sheet-3-Biosolubility.pdf
Certification of a type of fibre (believe it or not)
https://www.euceb.org/uploads/Modules/Plants/394.pdf
Example of a published paper on making fibres designed to reduce biopersistence
https://www.researchgate.net/public...new_generation_of_high_temperature_insulation
did you found studies that confirms that fiberglass leads to serious long term respiratory problems?
from my understanding, fiberglass is being dissolved in the alveaola by the macrophages rapidly. if i remember correctly, even cotton dissolve less rapidly then fiberglass...
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Not aware of any recent studies on the subject, but I can factually tell you the broken glass fibers themselves are similar to silica dust based on its composition and the way its dealt with by the lungs and associated part of the immune system. The man made fibers do not dissolve in H20 or decay organically based on the MSDS and this is the issue when inhaled as broken fibers. This was the main issue which prompted OSHA to mandate N95 masks when working with it in enclosed spaces.
Broken fiberglass looks like tiny little barbs and needles. Try touching it with sweaty skin and you'll understand what I'm talking about. I once had a very severe skin and lung reaction from just having removed and handled a crossover mounted under a layer of Owen's Corning insulation inside a speaker. I was put on a strong course of steroids to releave the irritation symptoms for about 4 weeks and also on a steroid inhaler for a few months after that. The dermatologist who treated me sent a sample of this fiberglass to a lab for testing after having seen my unusually severe reaction. The testing revealed a strong concentration of very fine broken strands much smaller on average than the usual size of glass fibers. No other immediate irritants were found so it was blamed on the FG material itself. The Dr said he has seen alot of reactions to FG which have triggered lasting auto immune response in a few people. He stated that many times the glass fibers can't exit the skin and get stuck for good (in some ways similar to asbestos) which can also be said for the lungs. I still get eczema flares on my arms and wrists out of the blue which has never happened before this exposure. I won't touch the stuff ever again (even with gloves) or have it in my direct exposed environment. I don't have nearly the same reaction to mineral wool and no reaction at all to sheeps wool.
I recall reading an article from a medical journal a while back (dont remember which one exactly). It mentioned some internal lab testing leaked from a well known manufacturer regarding potential risks to kidneys and liver from FG insulation fibers working their way into the bloodstream through the digestive tract and becoming embedded. This was based on lab tests with animals having been exposed to airborne micronized fiberglass dust. Several animals developed lung, liver and kidney tumors. Significant accumulations of material were found in the affected tissues of the animals. They used processed Silica dust for the control group in the testing, which showed minimal risk in comparison. The significant difference said to cause most of the issue was the shape and size of particles.
If the EPA has released any data on this subject, I wouldnt necessarily trust it based on how companies like Monsanto and Syngenta get away with murder nowadays. For me thats like being willing to forgive BASF for playing their destructive part in WW2 based on how well their open reel recording tape sounded (which did BTW sound amazing).
Anyways, In a subwoofer application, the fiberglass matting will be subject to significant physical vibration, causing many fibers to break loose over time. There are obviously no immediate concerns with this in a sealed box, but if the fiberglass is unbound and positioned in a high air velocity location in a ported sub enclosure, it will eventually get airborne.
If you look at some newer ported pro audio cabs, they use a type of dark thinner mineral wool with a surface binder stapled or clipped to the immediate cabinet walls close to the LF driver. JBL has been using it for at least 2 decades now and its a very effective dampening medium holding up much better than fiberglass. Its harder to tear and cut as well. Dacron poly fill isnt safe to use due to the passive crossover being a potential ignition source, plus Dacron doesn't perform as well as a dampening material anyways. Mineral wool is a safer material to use from a flammability standpoint.
Broken fiberglass looks like tiny little barbs and needles. Try touching it with sweaty skin and you'll understand what I'm talking about. I once had a very severe skin and lung reaction from just having removed and handled a crossover mounted under a layer of Owen's Corning insulation inside a speaker. I was put on a strong course of steroids to releave the irritation symptoms for about 4 weeks and also on a steroid inhaler for a few months after that. The dermatologist who treated me sent a sample of this fiberglass to a lab for testing after having seen my unusually severe reaction. The testing revealed a strong concentration of very fine broken strands much smaller on average than the usual size of glass fibers. No other immediate irritants were found so it was blamed on the FG material itself. The Dr said he has seen alot of reactions to FG which have triggered lasting auto immune response in a few people. He stated that many times the glass fibers can't exit the skin and get stuck for good (in some ways similar to asbestos) which can also be said for the lungs. I still get eczema flares on my arms and wrists out of the blue which has never happened before this exposure. I won't touch the stuff ever again (even with gloves) or have it in my direct exposed environment. I don't have nearly the same reaction to mineral wool and no reaction at all to sheeps wool.
I recall reading an article from a medical journal a while back (dont remember which one exactly). It mentioned some internal lab testing leaked from a well known manufacturer regarding potential risks to kidneys and liver from FG insulation fibers working their way into the bloodstream through the digestive tract and becoming embedded. This was based on lab tests with animals having been exposed to airborne micronized fiberglass dust. Several animals developed lung, liver and kidney tumors. Significant accumulations of material were found in the affected tissues of the animals. They used processed Silica dust for the control group in the testing, which showed minimal risk in comparison. The significant difference said to cause most of the issue was the shape and size of particles.
If the EPA has released any data on this subject, I wouldnt necessarily trust it based on how companies like Monsanto and Syngenta get away with murder nowadays. For me thats like being willing to forgive BASF for playing their destructive part in WW2 based on how well their open reel recording tape sounded (which did BTW sound amazing).
Anyways, In a subwoofer application, the fiberglass matting will be subject to significant physical vibration, causing many fibers to break loose over time. There are obviously no immediate concerns with this in a sealed box, but if the fiberglass is unbound and positioned in a high air velocity location in a ported sub enclosure, it will eventually get airborne.
If you look at some newer ported pro audio cabs, they use a type of dark thinner mineral wool with a surface binder stapled or clipped to the immediate cabinet walls close to the LF driver. JBL has been using it for at least 2 decades now and its a very effective dampening medium holding up much better than fiberglass. Its harder to tear and cut as well. Dacron poly fill isnt safe to use due to the passive crossover being a potential ignition source, plus Dacron doesn't perform as well as a dampening material anyways. Mineral wool is a safer material to use from a flammability standpoint.
as far as i am informed moth eggs don't survive temperatures below ~18° C for more than 10 hours. So putting wool into the freezer for 2 days before installing it may be another option (for sealed enclosures, of course).
Best response here in my opinion. I've done this many times on a ported woofer to smooth the impedance out. Have you ever tested it on a midrange (I've never tested it on a mid)? If so I'm curious what you found.
The natural roll off at either end of a drivers response profile will interact with any type of crossover, passive or active. The problem is the phase shifts and natural frequency roll offs add to the phase shifts and roll offs of the crossover filter to give an undesired result. The drivers' attributes must be taken into account to achieve the desired outcome.
Mike
Please stop scaremongering, silica dust is a true disaster to health, the engineered stone industry as a whole has been responsible for many deaths and there will be many more. I have a young family member with silicosis who most likely will not see 40. It has taken relatively little time for this tragedy to become widely known.
You have a strong opinion which runs contrary to mine, there is a wealth of information out there that is not anecdote or hearsay, others can make their own minds up based on whatever information resonates with them. I don't think this side show is particularly helpful to the topic at hand.
Bio soluble, as expected is a fitting description, it is only about the time the binders use to dissolve so the fibers
Meaning as i pointed out in the previous post. Fiber glass and rockwool can't be dissolved by your body, it's physically impossible. The binder that holds the fibers together does over time, so that your body can secrete the fiber content through your stomach, mucus etc with some kind of efficiency.
How much of it is left in your body after no one knows, and i did not see described in the linked documents obductions of test animals, testing of feces etc to see if the fibers persist in the body. That has never been documented.
The chemical composition is the main thing they use to evaluate the time of reduction so again a theoretical matter.
Those tiny fibers are in Knauf etc is better, but they are still broken tiny fiber glass or rock pieces that must travel through your body without getting stuck, and the traditional fibers very easily embeds in your skin that has resistance to penetration versus your internal organs that works the opposite way by design.
What is sure is that the newer eco friendly insulations are much better when it comes to this then the traditional fiber/glass wool at least.
I'm not a Doctor so i'm no expert, and this is not really the threads topic. Neither am i overly concerned about a small amounts of Rockwool/Fiber wool, most that don't work with it has limited exposure. And besides we eat 100s/1000s of tiny pieces of toxic plastic every day which surely is healthy too 🤣
That is from a 2010 publication on normal Insulation, with inhalation exposure and a animal with a digestive system that has similarity to humans.
Types of insulation glass wool fibers tested in experimental animals included Owens-Corning glass wool, MMVF 10 and 10a (both of which represent the respirable fraction of Manville 901 glass fiber), MMVF 11 (the respirable fraction of CertainTeed B glass fiber), and unspecified glass wool fibers. Inhalation exposure of F344 rats to Owens-Corning FG insulation fiberglass with binder (4 to 6 μm in diameter and > 20 μm long) significantly increased the incidence of mononuclear-cell leukemia in rats (males and females combined). Glass-fiber-related pulmonary and tracheal-bronchial lymph-node lesions were observed but were less severe than for exposure to special purpose fibers. As with the findings for Tempstran 100/475 glass fibers in this strain (discussed above), these findings were considered to be exposure-related (Mitchell et al. 1986, Moorman et al. 1988). Intraperitoneal injection of MMVF 11 glass fibers caused mesothelioma of the abdominal cavity in male and female Wistar rats (Roller et al. 1996, 1997), and intraperitoneal injection of MMVF 10 glass fibers increased tumor rates in male Wistar rats (Miller et al. 1999).
SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED THE INCIDENCE OF LEUKEMIA and CAUSED MESOTHELIOMA OF THE ABDOMINAL CAVITY and INCREASED TUMOR RATES!!!
And read below, is a bad german translation in the patent:
For this reason various guidelines and recommendations have been adopted to ensure that the fibers from which glass wool is made are either by macrophage digestion and mucolytic excretion or by resolution in the lung fluid can be removed biologically.
https://patents.google.com/patent/DE60007477T2/en
Meaning as i pointed out in the previous post. Fiber glass and rockwool can't be dissolved by your body, it's physically impossible. The binder that holds the fibers together does over time, so that your body can secrete the fiber content through your stomach, mucus etc with some kind of efficiency.
How much of it is left in your body after no one knows, and i did not see described in the linked documents obductions of test animals, testing of feces etc to see if the fibers persist in the body. That has never been documented.
The chemical composition is the main thing they use to evaluate the time of reduction so again a theoretical matter.
Those tiny fibers are in Knauf etc is better, but they are still broken tiny fiber glass or rock pieces that must travel through your body without getting stuck, and the traditional fibers very easily embeds in your skin that has resistance to penetration versus your internal organs that works the opposite way by design.
What is sure is that the newer eco friendly insulations are much better when it comes to this then the traditional fiber/glass wool at least.
I'm not a Doctor so i'm no expert, and this is not really the threads topic. Neither am i overly concerned about a small amounts of Rockwool/Fiber wool, most that don't work with it has limited exposure. And besides we eat 100s/1000s of tiny pieces of toxic plastic every day which surely is healthy too 🤣
That is from a 2010 publication on normal Insulation, with inhalation exposure and a animal with a digestive system that has similarity to humans.
Types of insulation glass wool fibers tested in experimental animals included Owens-Corning glass wool, MMVF 10 and 10a (both of which represent the respirable fraction of Manville 901 glass fiber), MMVF 11 (the respirable fraction of CertainTeed B glass fiber), and unspecified glass wool fibers. Inhalation exposure of F344 rats to Owens-Corning FG insulation fiberglass with binder (4 to 6 μm in diameter and > 20 μm long) significantly increased the incidence of mononuclear-cell leukemia in rats (males and females combined). Glass-fiber-related pulmonary and tracheal-bronchial lymph-node lesions were observed but were less severe than for exposure to special purpose fibers. As with the findings for Tempstran 100/475 glass fibers in this strain (discussed above), these findings were considered to be exposure-related (Mitchell et al. 1986, Moorman et al. 1988). Intraperitoneal injection of MMVF 11 glass fibers caused mesothelioma of the abdominal cavity in male and female Wistar rats (Roller et al. 1996, 1997), and intraperitoneal injection of MMVF 10 glass fibers increased tumor rates in male Wistar rats (Miller et al. 1999).
SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASED THE INCIDENCE OF LEUKEMIA and CAUSED MESOTHELIOMA OF THE ABDOMINAL CAVITY and INCREASED TUMOR RATES!!!
And read below, is a bad german translation in the patent:
For this reason various guidelines and recommendations have been adopted to ensure that the fibers from which glass wool is made are either by macrophage digestion and mucolytic excretion or by resolution in the lung fluid can be removed biologically.
https://patents.google.com/patent/DE60007477T2/en
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I don't care about your attitude towards this topic as you dont care about mine. Glad you're not concerned. My health has been negatively impacted for good thanks to the substance discussed. I care about telling others of the potential issues concerning fiberglass. You dont need to listen if you dont want to.
and BTW fiberglass strands are made from silica. Silica dust is worse, obviously, as an inhalation hazard.
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Silica glass is a kind of glass as the name is implied, but silica glass is composed of by almost only SiO2, while, on the other hand, other glasses are composed of by various kinds of elements.
The chemistry does not matter so much; silicon, glass, rock wool, mineral wool, asbestos or refractory ceramic fiber, they are all of similar shape, chunks and fibers and share chemical resistance to to the bodies defenses and all cause the same debilitating illnesses.
They all have a California Prop 65 Warning Label... "May Cause Cancer"
They all have a California Prop 65 Warning Label... "May Cause Cancer"
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Well - the users and manufacturers were not always that thin-skinned:
https://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=23363&stc=1&d=1172993525
Regards
Charles
https://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=23363&stc=1&d=1172993525
Regards
Charles