[Beryllium Oxide] or Synth-DOA

[The Dark force of dance]

Y-ellow Harry.
	Thanks for that.
>Good News / Bad News
>The bad news first. Beryllium Oxide is very toxic. Basically, if you inhale
>the dust, you will feel fine for about an hour and then drop stone cold dead.
>There is very little the doctors can do. You are "fucked".

This is not my understanding of the situation. I know that Beryllium Oxide
is carcinogenic. Almost 100% That's how it kills you. This is because it is
a bio-oxidant. It is uncertain that copious amounts of anti-oxidants would
provide some degree of protection.

I'm aware that beryllium oxide is used inside power packages but I have
also seen TO3 washers made from it. It is pink in colour and brittle.
Though I've never got so close as to find out how brittle. (I hope)

I am also told that at one time it was available as a paste. Ethan Duni
tells me he has seen it as a "Green" solid used almost like a glue.
Although what I'm dealing with is Blue, His description sounds like the
same stuff. It is used to glue a heat-sink bracket to the actual heat-sink.
I drilled into the heat-sink bracket to tap and mount a couple of TO220
amplifier chips and drew up some of this crushed up blue stuff. It was
crystalline and almost glass-like in consistency. It did not seem fine
enough to become airborne but I am not sure. I got rid of it pretty fast
but I am unsure of how much and in what form it may still be hanging round
the lab. Or whether I breathed any of it in.

I'm not dead yet so that's probably a good sign but from my understanding,
I may not know about it for a while yet.

The heat-sink in question is probably quite old. Perhaps 20 years. Back in
those days they still used substances like PCBs in electronics. Another
hazardous material. In Italy, they still do. This was an old CDC 208 volt
PSU from a computer system of some kind. CDC was an english main-frame
manufacture before the market for mainframes declined throughout the 1980s.

The substance may be just an adhesive compound but the fact that I was able
to drill into it where the bracket mates with the heat-sink has me thinking
otherwise.

Anyway thanks for that. I'm not dead yet and I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Be absolutely icebox.

 _ __        _                              
| "_ \      | |         batzman at all-electric.com / aek at all-electric.com
| |_)/  __ _| |_ ____           ALL ELECTRIC KITCHEN               
|  _ \ / _` | __|___ |  The Elementary Urban sanity CD
| |_) | (_| | |_  / /   out now on Transmission Communications
|_,__/ \__,_|\__|/ /    
                / ,__   http://www.all-electric.com
Goodfortune    |_____|