[sdiy] caps with PCB's in them

[Grant Richter]

When you burn PCBs they can produce dioxins (for example: in a  
transformer fire).

Dioxins are extremely poisonous, the primary symptom of dioxin  
exposure is "chlor-acne" a severe and disfiguring skin ailment.

If you have not burst out in plague-like skin lesions, then the PCB  
liquid did not get hot enough to produce dioxins.

On Jan 30, 2008, at 6:32 PM, anthony wrote:

> A while ago I was messing with a Matsushita oil capacitor. I didn't  
> realise that the solder blob at one end was not only soldering the  
> lead to the cap, but also holding the oil in. So a lot of capacitor  
> oil got in my desolering iron and big puffs of it went into my  
> face. I think this thing was in some sort of tube audio equipment,  
> but I can't remember for sure. I was just wondering if anyone knew  
> if Matsushita ever used PCB's in their caps. I ask because I have a  
> Matsushita motor-start oil cap that makes a point of saying that it  
> is NON-PCB. So this begs the question: did they at one time USE  
> PCB's and are making a point of clarifying for environmentally  
> consious end-users or constrasting older caps that weren't so. I  
> looked up the desccription of PCB's in my Merck Index, but it lists  
> the isomers separately - there doesn't seem to be an entry for the  
> mixture that would indubitably be used on the industrial scale in  
> capcitors. It kind of reminded me of what air conditioning freon  
> pumps smell like when you try to use them as vacuum pumps (it  
> works, but they overheat because there's no good way to cool them)  
> and that oil is some kind of heavy ester. I would expect PCB's to  
> smell like mothballs. I have connections at teh University who  
> could run a sample of the oil through a GC/mass-spec., but I  
> thought I'd ask you guys for opinions.
>
> It's hard for me to speparate new physical ailments from old ones  
> since I've been suffering from chronic pancreatitis since 2003. But  
> I've had a chronic sinus infection and had to have my spleen out  
> subsequent to having this capacitor come open. My gut feeling is  
> that they are unrelated. The chronic sinus infection is chronic  
> because I had to have my spleen out. But still, from time to time,  
> I wonder...
>
> So what do youse guys(goils?) think?
>
> Oh wait - I checked and the big 3.5uF/450VAC motor-start cap with  
> "NON-PCB" is a GE cap. The Matsushita is a 0.55uF 2300VAC microwave- 
> oven capacitor. It says, " No PCB's" on it.
>
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