LABORATORY SAFETY
In a few lines I try to illustrate in a simple and unpretentious way how with a few rules we can work in the laboratory without harming our health and the environment. In this article, which I hope is only the first in a series, before analyzing in detail the chemical components of ceramic products and their characteristics, I would like to deal with dust, fumes and gases. Dusts are produced during work by the clay itself, glazes, engobes and crystallines are in powder form and it is we ceramists who mix them with water. The danger to our health is particles with a size smaller than 2.5 microns, capable of penetrating into the pulmonary alveoli and accumulating causing diseases such as silicosis; that is why it is always a good rule to use during work involving dusts FFP2 masks, such as the ones we currently use every day unfortunately for the pandemic, also protect the eyes that could be irritated by the dusts with goggles and also put on gloves-the best and most resistant to basic or acidic chemicals are made of nitrile and neoprene. It is also important to keep the laboratory well cleaned at all times by vacuuming the floors and wiping the surfaces where you work with damp cloths. Cloths, tools and containers should be rinsed in a bucket containing water and not rinsed directly into the sink or water closets so as to avoid clogging the drains with clay sediment, but also to avoid putting residues into the water supply that can be harmful. The brushes we use for crystallines, glazes and engobes we can wash in prepared jars with water, we can rinse the brushes of blue, blue and green crystallines in one, those used with orange, yellow and red colors in another, so that at the end of the month we can recover our materials and reuse them. Particular attention should be paid to dust from ashes. When using wood ash, bone ash, or other materials to make glazes, special care must be taken because in addition to containing fine particulate matter, ashes are strongly alkaline and thus can cause even greater damage due to their alkalinity (i.e., because of their high ph). Regarding fumes and gases, it is always a good idea, when we operate the kiln-if it is inside the laboratory and not in a separate room-to operate it at night and use it when we are not present, because during the firing of both the cookie and the enameled products at low, medium or high temperature, gases and fumes are released that can be harmful because sulfur compounds and chlorinated compounds are present. Therefore, after using the oven, it is good to ventilate the room for good air exchange. Additional attention is due if cooking in reduction is carried out, since odorless and colorless carbon monoxide with high toxicity is developed in reduction. All this obviously refers to electric ovens, since gas ovens are always located outside. We can equip the laboratory with a fume hood, but this equipment is really very expensive. I have read and heard from many ceramists that it helps, in order to prevent the sedimentation of glazes and crystals, to add table salt or bleach/ bleach to these; these substances are chemically sodium chloride and sodium hypochlorite-substances that during firing release chlorine and hydrochloric acid which are extremely harmful as they are very corrosive. The above-mentioned compounds are harmful even in small amounts-they corrode the furnace heating elements and our lungs and pollute the environment.
Concluding that Madame Curie's argument applies to us ceramists-nothing is to be feared but everything is to be known and understood-I believe we all need to pay attention to health and the environment by learning to know well what we use and how we use it. Good work!