Healthier & Safer Car DIY
Discussion
1. Animal droppings a health hazard?
Sorting my late dad's collection of car, motorcycle, outboard motors, books and engineering workshop stuff earlier this year:
His 1969 Suzuki Club Racer was covered in bird poo and other outdoor yuck. After a couple of days' cleaning, I went home. I started to feel a strange illness. I believed I was coming down with proper flu. Covid test was a negative.
Massive headache too.
A few hours later and I was obviously very ill.
Long story short: it was caused by a viral or bacterial infection almost certainly from the inhalation or skin contact of the dust from dried bird droppings.
A couple of days in hospital and all was well. But boy was I rough!
Nearly every car being restored has its share of animal droppings, so maybe avoid working on vehicles that have stood for ages before a thorough pressure wash?
2. Eye protection: if you work on cars long enough without eye protection, you will get metal in your eye. With luck, it'll hurt and you get it taken out at A&E. If you don't realise, that tiny fragment can work its way to the unseen back/sides of your eyeball. There it silently stays until the day you need an MRI.
The MRI nurse will ask if you've ever worked in a job grinding metal.
Say 'Yes' always, because you may well have a piece embedded in your eyeball.
An MRI machine is amongst the most powerful sources of magnetism you will come across.
In fact, it is a bit pathetically weak at only 3,000 times stronger than a fridge magnet...
But Google 'MRI accident oxygen bottles Pakistan' and you'll see it's not quite so 'pathetic' after all.
So, the MRI team look at your eye X-ray and if you are fortunate, the metal is in a 'good' place and the foresaid scan takes place. I surely don't need to say what happens if yours is ina 'bad' place?
3. Antifreeze, I was a childish idiot until I was in my mid-twenties. amongst my foolish ways, I'd gladly 'taste' coolant for antifreeze prescence!!!??
When I worked in education, science, I learned that coolant won't poison you in the next few hours. No, it forms crystals in your kidneys and liver. The pain is apparently like passing a large Stag-Horn Kidney Stone (I have had over fifty kidney stones in my life, genetic and nowt to do with A/F ingestion and they hurt like Billy-Ho!) but in the case of A/F crystals in your organs, you unfortunately may not survive the experience. If you have a coolant leak, cats and other animals will lick the puddles with tragic consequence. Please wash it away with gallons of water.
4. Of the several welding methods, Electric Arc Welding, in particular is very efficient at giving the inexperienced welder 'ARC EYE'
I often wonder how many folk buy a Lidl or similar Arc Welder and welding rods on a whim and spend a Sunday morning trying to weld metal without much success. Eventually, they can strike an arc and fuse two bits of metal together. The next twelve hours is a near-universal experience to the tyro welder unused to shielding from the arc:
Mid-afternoon, you feel quite sleepy. Your eyes are a little tired and you simply must lie down.
Then BANG! Around 4pm you wake up.
Your eyes are on fire. The pain is what St. Bart perhaps felt in his 'better' final moments. Horrible. 9/10 pain on the Richter Scale.
You look in the mirror and your face is 'sunburned' and eyes raw meat.
Modern folk will go straight to A&E, but I filled the bathroom sink with cold water and salt. Instant relief. Really tough 1940s guys fill the sink with urine. Really.
However, the relief is short-lived. Your face quickly warms the cold water. Frantically, you drain the sink. Then refill, more salt. Rinse/repeat for the next eight hours. Thank heaven for modern welding masks. please buy one. I was in luck and my retinas aren't scarred by the Dreaded 'ARC EYE'.
All of This is simply saying, don't let any liquid you encounter during car repair pass your lips or get too much on your skin.
Do not breathe pigeon poop dust. Wash your hands before touching own/anybody elses genitalia.
False eyes - modern ones - are so realistic, a man in the USA sued his wife of 15 years, because he neglected to tell him that her left eye was a 'falsie'. Not sure how he eventually found out...
But unlike false limbs, false eyes don't actually 'work'.
Stay safe.
Sorting my late dad's collection of car, motorcycle, outboard motors, books and engineering workshop stuff earlier this year:
His 1969 Suzuki Club Racer was covered in bird poo and other outdoor yuck. After a couple of days' cleaning, I went home. I started to feel a strange illness. I believed I was coming down with proper flu. Covid test was a negative.
Massive headache too.
A few hours later and I was obviously very ill.
Long story short: it was caused by a viral or bacterial infection almost certainly from the inhalation or skin contact of the dust from dried bird droppings.
A couple of days in hospital and all was well. But boy was I rough!
Nearly every car being restored has its share of animal droppings, so maybe avoid working on vehicles that have stood for ages before a thorough pressure wash?
2. Eye protection: if you work on cars long enough without eye protection, you will get metal in your eye. With luck, it'll hurt and you get it taken out at A&E. If you don't realise, that tiny fragment can work its way to the unseen back/sides of your eyeball. There it silently stays until the day you need an MRI.
The MRI nurse will ask if you've ever worked in a job grinding metal.
Say 'Yes' always, because you may well have a piece embedded in your eyeball.
An MRI machine is amongst the most powerful sources of magnetism you will come across.
In fact, it is a bit pathetically weak at only 3,000 times stronger than a fridge magnet...
But Google 'MRI accident oxygen bottles Pakistan' and you'll see it's not quite so 'pathetic' after all.
So, the MRI team look at your eye X-ray and if you are fortunate, the metal is in a 'good' place and the foresaid scan takes place. I surely don't need to say what happens if yours is ina 'bad' place?
3. Antifreeze, I was a childish idiot until I was in my mid-twenties. amongst my foolish ways, I'd gladly 'taste' coolant for antifreeze prescence!!!??
When I worked in education, science, I learned that coolant won't poison you in the next few hours. No, it forms crystals in your kidneys and liver. The pain is apparently like passing a large Stag-Horn Kidney Stone (I have had over fifty kidney stones in my life, genetic and nowt to do with A/F ingestion and they hurt like Billy-Ho!) but in the case of A/F crystals in your organs, you unfortunately may not survive the experience. If you have a coolant leak, cats and other animals will lick the puddles with tragic consequence. Please wash it away with gallons of water.
4. Of the several welding methods, Electric Arc Welding, in particular is very efficient at giving the inexperienced welder 'ARC EYE'
I often wonder how many folk buy a Lidl or similar Arc Welder and welding rods on a whim and spend a Sunday morning trying to weld metal without much success. Eventually, they can strike an arc and fuse two bits of metal together. The next twelve hours is a near-universal experience to the tyro welder unused to shielding from the arc:
Mid-afternoon, you feel quite sleepy. Your eyes are a little tired and you simply must lie down.
Then BANG! Around 4pm you wake up.
Your eyes are on fire. The pain is what St. Bart perhaps felt in his 'better' final moments. Horrible. 9/10 pain on the Richter Scale.
You look in the mirror and your face is 'sunburned' and eyes raw meat.
Modern folk will go straight to A&E, but I filled the bathroom sink with cold water and salt. Instant relief. Really tough 1940s guys fill the sink with urine. Really.
However, the relief is short-lived. Your face quickly warms the cold water. Frantically, you drain the sink. Then refill, more salt. Rinse/repeat for the next eight hours. Thank heaven for modern welding masks. please buy one. I was in luck and my retinas aren't scarred by the Dreaded 'ARC EYE'.
All of This is simply saying, don't let any liquid you encounter during car repair pass your lips or get too much on your skin.
Do not breathe pigeon poop dust. Wash your hands before touching own/anybody elses genitalia.
False eyes - modern ones - are so realistic, a man in the USA sued his wife of 15 years, because he neglected to tell him that her left eye was a 'falsie'. Not sure how he eventually found out...
But unlike false limbs, false eyes don't actually 'work'.
Stay safe.
In short:
Don't eat faeces.
Don't put metal shavings in your eyes.
Don't drink industrial chemicals.
Don't laser your face.
We used to have a word for chaps who weren't aware of these rules.
The OP paints a picture of a man who has a weekly A&E appointment as is known by all the staff.
Don't eat faeces.
Don't put metal shavings in your eyes.
Don't drink industrial chemicals.
Don't laser your face.
We used to have a word for chaps who weren't aware of these rules.
The OP paints a picture of a man who has a weekly A&E appointment as is known by all the staff.
This explains something... I accidentally stumbled across some videos of German people treating each others' arc eye. It must have been painful as they were making groaning sounds too.
It's pretty straightforward stuff but it's surprising how many people still handle nasty fluids without nitrile or similar gloves on. You can absorb all sorts of nasties through unbroken skin, especially if you are also using solvents such as brake cleaner or white spirit.
It's pretty straightforward stuff but it's surprising how many people still handle nasty fluids without nitrile or similar gloves on. You can absorb all sorts of nasties through unbroken skin, especially if you are also using solvents such as brake cleaner or white spirit.
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