Macopinion

Computer Chemical Emissions Worse Than Ever In The MacIntel Era

Apple has been under attack for the past several months from the environmental activist group Greenpeace for allegedly being a laggard compared with some of its competitors at getting toxic substances out of its products and implementing "green" manufacture, marketing, and post-sale policies. I'm inclined to think that Apple is being unfairly singled out, but there is one area of environmental concern where they, along with other computer manufacturers are definitely not doing very well at all, and perhaps arguably worse than the were a decade ago.

I'm referring to chemical vapor emissions from computer systems, which have always been a problematical issue for persons like myself and an unfortunately growing cohort of others afflicted with a syndrome known as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), which makes one's relationship with computers a bittersweet affair to say the least. On the one hand, a computer connected to the Internet is a welcome, even indispensable means of communication and a tool for interaction with a chemically-polluted world that many of us are obliged to keep at arm's length.

The other side of the coin for some of us struggling with this illness is that computers contain a lot of plastics, and plastics tend to gas off chemical vapors. Newer computers also tend to run significantly hotter, which amplifies their chemical emissions profile. For example, my PowerBook 5300, which I bought new in 1996 and which was built in Mountain View, California, never gave me any problem in this context from the time I first unpacked it from its box. Nor did the first generation, cacheless PowerBook G3 Series 233 MHz unit I used for a couple of months in end of 1998. That machine was built in Cork, Ireland, but the landscape shifted radically when Apple shifted PowerBook production from Ireland to Taiwan in the late summer of '98. While the second generation G3 Series PowerBooks looked the same, and had only a modest speed bump along with a few engineering changes, the Taiwanese-built WallStreets definitely smelled a lot different, and I soon discovered that the 233 MHz model I bought in January, 1998 made me very ill when I shared airspace with it, a problem that has afflicted every subsequent Apple notebook I've encountered, and the current stable of MacBook Pros and MacBooks are the worst yet, almost certainly due to their torrid operating temperatures.

Indeed, while I strongly suspect that the chemical formulation of materials used in internal circuit boards is a key factor, heat is also a biggie. That delightfully non-smelly old 5300 would barely get lukewarm to the touch even under hard use (and that anaemic 100 MHz 603e CPU always seemed to be hard pressed). The Irish-built "MainStreet" I used had no cache and was a relatively cool runner as well, while my Taiwanese 233 MHz PDQ had 512Kb of L2 cache and ran considerably hotter, although it did have an entirely different smell. My nephew bought an identical machine at the same time, and his father said it would make his eyes water when it was new. The Irish WallStreets did have an odor, but it was very different from the smell of the Taiwanese WallStreets, and I can only surmise that the chemical composition of the case plastics and circuit board phenolics used respectively must have been different.

Multiple Chemical Sensitivities complicates one's relationship with computers and many other things in our 21st Century artificial environment immensely. MCS appears to be an increasingly prevalent phenomenon, but one that manufacturers of consumer products, like computers, barely acknowledge. I've written from time to time here and elsewhere about my Multiple Chemical Sensitivity travails over the years, and it would be nice to report that there had been some progress, but alas, the diametrical opposite of progress obtains.

Last week I received a query from a reader who prefers not to be identified, but who has been reacting acutely to the chemical fume emissions from first a new MacBook, and then in hope that the metal case of the MacBook Pro might render it less obnoxious, one of those. No joy. With both machines she says was experiencing throat and nasal irritation and inflammation and tightening in her chest when exposed to the fumes from the new notebooks.

Like myself, this individual has been struggling with multiple chemical sensitivities for many years, in her case dating from exposure to insecticide spraying while on holiday in a foreign country. An environmental medicine specialist doctor once told me that in his estimation, as least half, and probably more cases of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity could be traced to pesticide exposure.

Anyway, her local Apple representatives were reportedly doing their best to help resolve the problem for this customer, but I am skeptical that there is much that can be done post engineering and manufacture to diminish the level of emissions from new computers to a degree that they are tolerable to acutely chemically-sensitive people. The only real solution would be to formulate and use low-odor plastics or other material substitutes in the internal circuit boards, which is where most of the noxious miasma they give off originates, and why the metal-skinned MacBook Pro was not noticeably less problematical than the polycarbonate MacBook for this user.

As I noted, this problem seems to be getting worse rather than better with newer, faster computers running hotter than ever, thus baking more chemicals out of the circuit board plastics, and blowing it out into the local airspace environment with their frequently-running cooling fans. A glint of possible "silver lining" to this is that these hotter machines may gas off faster than the older, cooler-running ones did. It remains to be seen. I had to keep the last brand new laptop I bought, a relatively cool-running by current standards 700 MHz G3 iBook, in an externally-vented isolation case for the first two years I owned it before it finally gassed off enough that it didn't make me sick sharing airspace with it.

My current, 17" PowerBook was an Apple Certified Refurbished unit, but had evidently been hardly used if at all, and still had plenty of chemical odor when I got it. After 13 months of use, it's beginning to tone down, but its frequent fan-cycling is an extra complication, since the fumes blown out its cooling vents are worse than what you get when the fans arent running.

This is not a uniquely Apple problem, since pretty well all popular notebook computers are now made in Taiwan or China, in the same factories using the same materials, and they all stink when they're new. Notebooks can present a particularly difficult challenge for the chemically-sensitive because one uses them at such close proximity, although that used to be mitigated somewhat by the fact that their cooling fans (the 5300 had no fan at all) would cut in only under extraordinary circumstances, if at all, while desktop machines' fans ran all the time.

The only workarounds I've been able to come up with are wearing activated charcoal respirators, the aforementioned isolation case, and using older computers that have had a few years to gas off, although it was a couple of years after I bought my Pismo PowerBook as a one-year-old used unit that I could use it comfortably out of the isolation case. However, it's been completely benign for several years now, as has the iBook.

A big part of the problem for we MCS-sufferers is that our degree of reactive sensitivity to various chemical substances, both synthetic and natural, is radically lower than conventional toxicity thresholds, and of course computers are just one of a dismayingly vast spectrum of potential exposure vectors. Personally, I can get severe reactions to some chemicals at levels I can't detect with my nose, and some that I am acutely sensitive to such as chlorofluorocarbon solvents (eg: freon) are odorless anyway. Something that needs to be understood is that chemical sensitivity is *not* an aesthetic distaste for certain smells. I react to some chemicals that I relish the smell of, such as the terpiferous oils in freshly sawn pine lumber or certain flower fragrances, while I find certain disgusting odors like pig or chicken manure or body odor completely benign in terms of reactivity.

With plastics, I find that more often than not any level of detectable odor means there is enough chemical offgassing occurring that there will be trouble, and of course when you apply heat, the offgassing is enhanced exponentially.

Apple has posted a Knowledge Base article entitled: "New Equipment: Odors May Be Present Short-Term." http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24947 which says:

"New products sometimes emit an odor after being turned on and allowed to warm up. In most cases the odor dissipates after a brief period. This is normal.

"In some cases, an unusual odor may be detected when a product has been turned on and allowed to warm up to operating temperature. Typically, the odor is detected when the product is new, similar to odors generated from new carpeting or a new car. In most cases the odor dissipates after a brief period.

If the odor persists, place the unit in a well-ventilated room and allow it to operate over an extended period of time (possibly 24-72 hours) or until the odor dissipates. If the odor persists, contact your local Service Provider for an evaluation."

Not that the local service provider will be much help, even with the best intent in the world. It's true that the fumes from brand new, out-of-the-box computers can be so bad that even non chemically sensitive people will complain, and that initial, intense blast of chemicals (aka "new computer smell") will indeed tone down with a few days runtime, the diminishment will fall far short of making the machine tolerable for someone with MCS.

Neither does sniffing a product in a dealer's showroom help much. It might identify something that smells truly awful, but there are too many other odors floating around in an environment like that for such tests to be of any real use. An MCS person really has to try the product out in his/her normal working environment to discern whether there will be a problem.

When I bought my WallStreet PowerBook new in January 1999, I tried running it 24/7 with 19 QuickTime movies looping and wrapped in a blanket to hopefully "bake" some of the new smell out (the ventilation port was left unobscured and I don't recall the fan cutting in). After two weeks of this, it was probably a bit less noxious, but still giving off too much phenolic and plastic gassing for me to tolerate. I then tried placing the PowerBook, with the battery removed and the CD-ROM tray open, in an ozone chamber for several days under an intense ozone soak. Still no joy. My workaround was finally to build an externally vented, glass and wood case to house the PowerBook, in which it mostly resided for the next three years, after which it had finally gassed off to a degree that I could use it in normal laptop mode without wearing a carbon respirator mask.

My Pismo PowerBook, which was just under a year old when I purchased it in October, 1991, was also intolerably smelly, possibly more pungent than the WallStreet had been. An additional factor with it was that the former owner used some sort of cologne or other proprietary scent that had been absorbed by the keyboard and palm rests. Anyway, it also lived in a vented glass case for several years too, although it's now gassed off and non-problematic.

I have built two notebook isolation cases, which are shaped like oversize, open, laptop computers (a big "L"), with panes of glass on the front of the upright limb, and the top of the horizontal limb, framed with one inch by one inch spruce.

The glass is set in 1/8" routed dados. The upright back part of the housing is about four inches deep for access to the ports as well as accommodating the open PowerBook display lid.

A hinged, flip-up panel at the top of the upright limb allows access to the ports on the back of the PowerBook, and the horizontal glass panel is hinged to open for access to side mounted I/O ports CD/DVD drives and PC Card slots. I did not use any sealant of any sort.

The case does not have to be airtight, and indeed needs provision for air to enter. Neither box is an example of fine finish cabinetry, both of them being constructed from well-seasoned lumber I had on hand - mostly spruce and a bit of pine.

One of the boxes is vented through the floor into the basement below my workstation, with a 12 volt fan mounted at the basement end, which keeps noise to a minimum. The other box is vented through a removable plywood panel that slots into a horizontal slider window beside the computer table. On this one, the extraction fan is mounted inside the window end of the exhaust duct, but this is less satisfactory from a noise standpoint, although functionally, it works fine. The ductwork is a combination of conduits I've fabricated from cardboard (Bristol-board weight), and PVC plumbing pipe, but there are a variety of other sorts of ducting that would work fine. Both of my boxes are bottomless. I just plunk them down over the open computer on a table or platform.

The dimensions are not critical, and should be sized to accommodate whatever machine will be housed, ideally leaving ample room for access to ports and bays. My boxes have worked fine with machines from a 12" iBook to a 17" PowerBook, and I made them purposely roomy with expansion in mind and for more convenient access to ports and slots. I haven't found cooling a problem, and indeed with my 17" PowerBook the computer's internal cooling fans cut in less when it's in the box than out in the open air, presumably thanks to the exhaust fan keeping a constant stream of cooling air moving past it with heated air being exhausted. The glass area is large enough that I think it acts as a fairly efficient radiator, and of course I live in Canada. The computer sits on a RoadTools CoolPad when inside the box, which helps as well. You could vent the case anywhere that would be convenient. Out a window or even into a closet as long as it was away from your immediate environment.

This case is the first one I built, and it has served me well for eight years. There is enough depth — just- to sit a Pismo, Lombard, or iBook on a standard Road Tools CoolPad for more efficient cooling.

There is an aperture on one side of the case to accept an intake for the duct to the basement which is just a piece of two and one-half inch plastic plumbing drain pipe. The fan hangs from the bottom of the pipe on a flexible plastic tube secured with rubber bands, which minimizes noise and vibration. With the fan at the basement end, one barely hears it. The case is a little over 20 inches wide, which allows me to insert CDs on the right and PC cards on the left.

However, when I built the second case, I made the lower limb of the "L" shape deeper in section, which allows the computer to sit on a Podium CoolPad for even better cooling.

With both cases, the lid of the top is hinged to flip open for access to the ports at the back of the PowerBook. The glass panels over the keyboard are also hinged to lift up for access to the keys and the optical drives, PC Card slots, and side ports, and the second case also has a small flip-up panel for quick access to the ports on the left side of the iBook.

I built the cases out of basically stuff that I had laying around. I used glass panes from old house or car door windows, well aged spruce lumber which had very little smell, plywood paneling for the backs, and old computer cooling fans with power supplies salvaged from something or other. The wood frame components are relatively small-dimensioned, basically just scrap lumber.

For more information and commentary on MCS and computers, see:

Gassing Out: Harmful Chemicals from Computers
and
From Red to Green: Are Hot Notebooks Cool?

A few more observations on the topic.

In 2004, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco signed a proclamation designating the month of May "Chemical Sensitivity Awareness Month," a move that heartened those who suffer from Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. MCS is a poorly catalogued and understood ailment, with symptoms that vary widely from person to person, and the medical community is divided over the causes and even the existence of MCS. Whatever the cause, sufferers find themselves in effect poisoned by contemporary society. A growing number of people are lobbying Congress and public-health agencies to recognize the disease; one key goal is to have the disease officially recognized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If we can get it established that chemicals in consumer products, etc., are making people sick, more effort might be put into pro-actively addressing the problem.

Strictly speaking, MCS is not a classic allergy, and usually will not show up in conventional allergy testing. That is one reason why many in the medical profession are skeptical about MCS as a diagnosis. Allergies tend to be irritant-specific. MCS is, well, multiple.

Commonly the syndrome will "cascade" into sensitivity to many common substances, especially, but not limited to, synthetic chemicals. New cars can be especially bad, and it is topical to note here that auto upholstery and interior plastics are treated with flame retardants. Even wearing a charcoal respirator, I'm not a happy camper in vehicles newer than about five years old. On the other hand, I find my two old Toyotas (1989 and 1990 models) quite tolerable without a mask.

A 1995 analysis by Santford V. Overton & John J. Manura of the air in a new Lincoln Continental ( http://www.sisweb.com/referenc/applnote/app-36-a.htm ) identified more than 100 volatile organic chemicals in the air samples analyzed. The air samples studied produced 50 or more volatile organics which were identified in addition to many more that were either too weak to identify or in which a good NBS library match was not achievable, suggesting that new-car smell is a mix of plasticizers, lubricants, solvents, adhesives, gasoline, and no doubt some bits from the vinyl. None of these things is good for you, and as a cocktail who knows what the cumulative effect is? If you're chemically sensitive they can certainly make you acutely ill in the immediate term.

The BBC has reported that researchers in Australia say the smell of new cars can be toxic and can even cause cancer. A two-year study by an Australian government research organization found gases from vinyl and plastic materials in new cars cause headaches, nausea and drowsiness. The chemicals involved included benzene — a known cancer-causing agent — which was found in one case at five times the recommended exposure limit.

The study by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) found emissions can take just a few minutes to take effect and may actually be responsible for many traffic accidents. The CSIRO study found total volatile organic compound (VOC) concentrations initially very high -- up to 64,000 micrograms per cubic metre -- in two Australian-made cars three to 10 weeks after manufacture. Levels decreased by approximately 60 percent in the first month, but still substantially exceeded the NHMRC indoor air goal of 500 micrograms per cubic metre.

Long-term exposure could cause cancers and abnormalities in unborn babies. Some of the air toxics emitted inside new cars during the CSIRO study included: carcinogenic benzene as previously noted; acetone, a mucosal irritant; cyclohexanone, a possible human carcinogen; ethylbenzene and MIBK -- systemic toxic agents; xylene isomers, a fetal development toxic agent.

Overton & Manura note: "Potential health risks exist due to the toxic nature of many of these components. Individually, the contribution from any one product may not be significant, but the cumulative levels of emissions from these products are increasingly becoming a major concern. Because many of the volatile emissions and by-products from these products are toxic... Although the concentrations of VOC's were significantly reduced over time in a new automobile, the exposure of the public to such compounds that were identified should be of concern to both the automobile industry and health officials. These air samples show that the public is constantly in contact with a wide variety of potentially harmful VOC's due to cleaning supplies, lubricants and fuel by-products. Because of the potential toxic nature of many of these compounds, additional knowledge of the levels of these organic compounds in the car's interior is required in order to determine human health impacts."

Like car interiors, computers and Video Display Terminals (VDTs) off-gas VOCs. The greatest amount of VOC off-gassing is around 175 µg/hr and goes down quickly within the first 300 hours of use. In proposed regulations to improve indoor air quality, the U.S. OSHA has listed the following chemicals as being emitted by computers/VDTs:
n-Butanol
2-Butanole
2-Butoxyethanol
Butyl-2-Methylpropyl phthalate
Caprolactam
Cresol
Diisooctyl phthalate
Dodecamethyl cyclosiloxane
2-Ethoxyethyl acetate
Ethylbenzene
Hexanedioic acid
3-Methylene-2-pentanone
Ozone
Phenol
Phosphoric Acid
Toluene
Xylene

Another nasty little chemical cocktail. Some of those chemicals are known or suspected carcinogens. While none would likely be emitted from computers in quantities that would exceed any established workplace health and safety limits, an unknown factor is how some of these chemicals may interact with each other to cause health problems many years in the future. And we MCS victims react to concentrations of chemical toxins far below any established safety standards -- sometimes thousands of times lower.

You may not need to be chemically-sensitized to suffer harm from computer chemical off-gassing. Especially when the equipment is new, the off-gassing is prolific and noticeable even to people who aren't particularly sensitive; eg: that "new computer smell," One of the chemicals listed above, from the family known as Phthalates, are softeners used in plastic manufacture, don't bond with the material and leach out over time, and are suspected of causing kidney and liver damage and other health problems.

Even if one is not knowingly afflicted with chemical sensitivity, there should be concern about what these chemical emissions are doing to anyone's immune system. A fellow MCS sufferer who works in a university science laboratory quips there are two types of people: environmentally ill and not-yet-environmentally ill. In a world as saturated as ours is with chemical and electromagnetic pollution, that's only partly tongue-in-cheek.



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cmoore@macopinion.com


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