Exhaust fumes

[Forest2Furniture]

I've been milling with an alaskan for about 5 yrs and recently I've started to wear a face mask as I've been suffering with nose bleeds. Turns out I've got an allergy towards the petrol fumes, this would make sense as your head is near the chainsaw exhaust when milling.

 

What I found most shocking was the amount of wood dust caught in the mask.

 

With the new findings that the saw dust from so many trees is carcinogenic I was wondering how many of you wear face masks when milling.

[TimberCutterDartmoor]

A dust mask will only filter just that - dust or particulate. Fumes are in vapour and gaseous phase so you need a rubber seal mask with gas/vapour filtration canisters.

[agg221]

Are you using Aspen for milling? I do now, as I found it made an enormous difference to how I felt afterwards.

 

Alec

[Rich2484]

Are you using Aspen for milling? I do now, as I found it made an enormous difference to how I felt afterwards.

 

Alec

 

What he said. Aspen will be a LOT better for you with or without a nose bleed problem.

 

Are you sure its exhaust fumes and not the dust going up that is causing an issue?

 

I used to clean grain stores out a lot and found that without a mask I would get bleeds very often even when I was finishing and walking out the stores when I thought I was clear of the dust. Turned out the dust would act like sand paper against the inside blood vessels and rupture them.

 

I changed masks from the paper things to a proper one with canisters, would wear it until I was definatly clear.

[Forest2Furniture]

It's a 3M rubber sealed gas/vapour mask.

No Alec, I'm not using Aspen - what is it?

 

Had blood test etc, it's petrol fumes causing the problem

[Rich2484]

It's a 3M rubber sealed gas/vapour mask.

No Alec, I'm not using Aspen - what is it?

 

Uh oh..........:lol::lol::lol:

 

You need a very powerfull search light with an image on it.

[josharb87]

Aspen is an expensive higher grade of clean burning petrol that should be considered PPE

[Rich2484]

Try this thread. There are a few dealers for it and eddie@aspen is on this forum aswell.

 

http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/chainsaws/41601-one-reason-i-use-aspen-42.html

[agg221]

Aspen is an alkylate petrol, available as a pre-mixed 2 stroke fuel or as 4-stroke. It has far fewer of the unpleasant and downright unhealthy additives present in standard pump fuel.

 

In a 4-stroke engine, combustion is essentially complete, however in a 2-stroke engine some of the fuel comes out of the exhaust unburnt, associated with using the fuel as the lubricant rather than having a separate oil system. That means you're breathing in the additives, not just nominally carbon dioxide and water as from a car exhaust. There are several unpleasant things to be breathing in, the one which I'm most interested in being benzene as it is significantly carcinogenic. It's added to pump fuel at about 2%, so about 0.6% is present in the exhaust vapour. In a day of milling I reckon I would breath in enough to be worried about.

 

Aspen is more expensive than standard pump fuel - definitely. It's about £17.50 for 5l round my way. However, even if that adds about £20 to the fuel costs in a day of milling the fact that I don't feel ill afterwards, and am less likely to be seriously ill in the future, makes it worth it for me.

 

A convenient side benefit is that it doesn't go stale like standard petrol, so you don't have to throw away the remains of a can, or even drain the tank on the saw.

 

Alec

[Rich2484]

When you think about it 17.50 isn't that much for 5 ltr. How big is the saw tank? .5ltr. If not less.

 

How much milling on one tank?

 

Plus as its been said how long are you milling for.. So how much are you breathing in. Even without the benzene in fuels the rest of the fumes are not good for you. May as well smoke 30 a day.

 

A good tuned aspen running saw will be a lot better for anyone. And you don't go home stinking of petrol.