juls

A drop of dawne and grease is in your watertable.

Kontact

When did I say that natural substances can't also be toxic?


This conversation is going nowhere because you guys are either misunderstanding the basic point I'm making, or you are too defensive of your choices to consider it.

Bisphenal A was discovered in 1891, was shown to be an artificial estrogen in the 1930s and was introduced into consumer plastics in 1957. It took another 40 years for it to be proposed that BPA might leach out of the plastic and act as an endocrine disrupter, another 10 years after that for studies to come out and another 10 years after that for Europe to label it "a substance of high concern" in 2017. The US banned it for baby bottles in 2012.

So when you say "what studies", my reply is "What studies were examining the known estrogen connection in BPA between 1957 and 1997?" Because there weren't any, and you know that. So of course there are no studies about autism and OMS - they don't know what causes autism to study specific chemicals, and who is digging around trying to find something wrong with OMS? Certainly not chemical companies that make it, businesses that use it or clean bike fetishists who want it.


Mineral spirits poisoning killed a lot of painters, and OMS is less toxic than MS. But you have to be nose-blind to use OMS for more than a few minutes without the beginning of a headache. It isn't odorless, and it isn't non-toxic.


As I stated earlier, there is almost nothing you need to do on a bicycle that involves strong solvents. Chain makers tell you specifically not to use solvents on their products, and nearly everything else can be cleaned with a dry or oiled rag. Bikes are low temp, low torque machines that do not bake their lubricants into tars that require solvents to free up like an engine does.

noglider 

I think the question is why does the bike industry attract weirdos?

Troul 

cycles don't require a license to commute.

Kontact

Because it is unprofitable for owners and pays workers poorly.

noglider 

Ding. We have a winner here. As expensive as we think our bikes are, we pay too little for them.

CliffordK

Aren't we all a little weird?

Different people are attracted to bicycles for different reasons. There is a group of cyclists that ride because they choose to be less polluting. And, perhaps that includes a group of counter-culture rebels.

So, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the same non-polluting car-free cycle commuters would also work in bike shops, and choose to avoid strong solvents.

And, it may be worth looking for viable alternatives.

noglider 

Fair enough, @CliffordK. Again, having poor earning potential leaves more slack for weirdness. Not that we're all stupid or social misfits, but it is a shame that some industries are so poorly rewarded for the intelligence and hard work and devotion.

Deal4Fuji

good one liners just don't get recognized anymore

cyccommute 

This conversation is going nowhere because you insist on dragging it everywhere. For example

Bisphenol A has nothing to do with mineral spirits. Bisphenol A also has reactive sites that can be utilized in a chemical manner. Mineral spirits, especially odorless ones, have few if any chemical compounds that get involved in much chemistry whether that is in the body or outside of it. Odorless mineral spirits are hydrocarbons that unreactive under most conditions and particularly unreactive under conditions that humans would experience. You can make them react with catalysts and at very high temperatures (200°C or higher).

At to autism, if you have some special information about a connection between autism and odorless mineral spirits, by all means share it. But I doubt you'll get much traction since there has to be at least some evidence of causality. Autism is a childhood disorder. It doesn't present in older individuals. Are you saying that all mothers of autistic children were breathing in vast quantities of mineral spirits or exposing their children to mineral spirits? What's the mechanism of how odorless mineral spirits causing autism? You brought it up so back up your claims with some evidence.

That article you linked to shows that someone is investigating mineral spirits. It's a review article which, in the parlance of science, means that the authors went out and looked at all the literature on the subject, reviewed the findings and reported on them. The money shot of the abstract is this

That says that the findings of a number of studies is that Type I Class A mineral spirits...which is the one with the highest aromatic content...won't kill you immediately and probably won't kill you slowly. We scientists use "probably" a lot because we want to leave ourselves some wiggle room but, for the most part, you won't find any "gotchas" on mineral spirits studies in the future. You may be a visionary who has discovered an unknown link between minerals spirits and autism but I rather doubt it.

Evidence? Study? A paper on the how many painters per year are killed by mineral spirits? Even a solid number? Like the Liberace thing and autism thing, you are making stuff up again.

I agree that bicycles don't need strong solvents. Mineral spirits isn't a "strong" solvent. It's pretty mild.

As for what the chain manufacturers say, if they say something like what KMC does, you can dismiss most of it out of hand. Some of what they say is true but other comments are so far off the mark as to be comical. For example

Partly true. More importantly neither acidic nor alkali based detergents have much effect on the grease. I kind of doubt they will cause the chain to break.

Um. No. Just no. An "aggressive" degreaser ....whatever that is...isn't going to "cause cracks". Assuming that they mean a hydrocarbon degreaser as an "aggressive" degreaser, of course. It will have no effect on the steel. You can crack a chain if you soak it in salt water or in a water based degreaser with salt present, however.

INSTANTLY ruin your chain? (Now I have coffee on my screen!). I would suggest people avoid using chain washing machines since they are messy and mostly ineffective...but mostly just messy. They won't "ruin" your chain. A chain isn't that delicate.

People do all kinds of things manufacturers say you "shouldn't" do to a bike. This is just CYA. Wait a minute....

Some guy on these forums said "The "correct" way to wax a chain: Clean entire drivetrain with multiple solvents". That same guy says to follow the manufacturer's instructions and "not to use solvents on their products". Something doesn't add up.

Kontact

What all this mostly demonstrates is an inability to read. How many times do I have to say that there isn't a connection with autism and I used that as an example?

From your responses, I'd say several million times because you aren't able to understand anything that isn't hit-you-over-the-head literal. You must be fun to talk to at parties.

livedarklions

But he's right, your argument makes no sense.

Your logic is:

A. Some illnesses have increased in frequency.

B. Environmental factors must have played a role in those increases.

C. Because we can't prove to a certainty that petroleum distillates are not one of those environmental factors, exposure to them should be avoided.

Let's set aside whether B is actually true (questionable), the reasoning of C could literally be applied to every single substance on earth not vital for our survival. You keep trying to obscure this by throwing in irrelevant and clearly deadly substances like dioxin, but you started in this thread by advocating the use of "oil, soap and brushes." No question that the use of soap has increased dramatically in the past two centuries. Can you "prove" that soap didn't cause increased cancers? And on what basis do you assume that non-petroleum "oil" poses less environmental hazards than petroleum distillates? Where are the studies on the health effects of lemon oil exposure?

Kontact

Petroleum distillates are dangerous, which is why OMS was developed from MS - to decrease the toxicity. Lemon oil was developed from a something we eat, because that certainly appears to be a less likely path to carcinogens than making petroleum less toxic. Maybe water is toxic and we should be bathing in OMS. The only problem with that is no one seems to get headaches from using water, but people do seem to think gloves and a fume hood are the minimum safe protections from OMS.

Human beings have dealt with a wide variety of substances for millennia, but petroleum derivatives are relatively new. It is perfectly reasonable to be more suspicious of the newest stuff we introduce into our systems rather than take such a "reasonable" approach that we are equating OMS to lemon oil.

I have spent more than enough time using a filtered OMS parts washer with heavy gloves and a vent hood to know that the OMS stinks, makes me feel terrible and leaves a film on all the parts that doesn't just disappear when you wipe them off and that you can still smell days later.

And if you're paying attention - I didn't say that we should all be using vast quantities of surfactants or citrus cleaners instead of OMS, but that bikes don't need to be degreased for the most part. Simple mechanical cleaning and reapplication of lubricants does 95% of the work. The black stuff on your chainring isn't slowing you down.

livedarklions

Point taken about degreasing--I love me a greasy chain! Keeps the bike ever so quiet.

And avoid whatever you want, I don't care. "it smells bad and I feel bad after breathing it in, and you're not paying me enough to put up with it" are good enough reasons without bringing in dioxin and a bunch of dubious distinctions. I really don't know whether second-hand smoke might kill me, but I don't want to be around it because it makes me feel quite sick.

I'm sure I could construct an argument showing that exposure to citrus fruit grew at approximately the same rate and at the same period as petroleum exposure, but I really don't have the time to cull some facts selectively. 200 years ago, the vast majority of humans probably went their whole lives without seeing a lemon or an orange as we know them today.

Kontact

Like those global warming cherry pickers, right? It is always easy to use the tenants of science to dismiss the broader scope.

livedarklions

First of all--"tenets", not "tenants".

Second--you obviously missed the point--my nonsense example was just to illustrate how thin your logic was. You've cherry picked some health issues and noted that they seem to have increased at the same time as petroleum products. That's just "correlation is causation" bad logic, as is "chemical x is related to toxic chemical y, therefore chemical x is presumably toxic." It sounds all scientificky, but it's nonsense.

OK, I'm bored and this isn't bikes. Take a last cheap shot and I'll ignore it.

Kontact

I didn't "cherry pick" anything. I listed a couple examples off the top of my head, thinking that people would understand the general gist of what I was getting at rather than fastening on any one illness or product and making an argument that I was connecting autism to OMS.

What's "nonsense" is when people can't understand a general statement well enough to respond in kind. Instead they get target fixation on "disproving" a statement that wasn't supposed to be provable in the first place, and then attempt to discredit the poster with dumb stuff.

Like correcting his spelling.

cyccommute 

Ah, the classic "you don't know how to read defense". You are the one who keeps bring up things that aren't related to the discussion at hand. You are the one who has made wild claims. You are the one who brought up autism and claimed that it has roots in mineral spirit use. And you haven't said there isn't a connection to autism. There are 15 mentions of "autism" in this thread...most of them in quotes to your original post. The closest you have come saying there isn't a connection is when you said "while I am unconcerned about OMS causing me to develop autism, what is it doing to my genes that I can pass on?" That's not exactly saying that you were only using it as an example.

I also noticed you completely ignored the rest of the post, including your own conflicting advice about stripping lubricant from chains.

cyccommute 

More hand waving and misdirection.

Substances like lead, arsenic, mercury? These were all used for millennia for lots of purposes. That doesn't make them safer because we have millennia's worth of experience with them.

Of course according to the abstract that you linked to in a failed attempt to prove your point, mineral spirits aren't particularly hazardous either.

That's a personal feeling. Most people can tell the difference between the odorless mineral spirits and the one with a higher aromatic content. Perhaps your experience is with fly-by-night parts washers.

As for the film, that's the oil that is dissolved in the solvent. It doesn't evaporate.

I do agree. Of course I haven't said don't clean all the lubricant off a chain in one place and do clean it in another. I'm a proponent of not using chain lubricants that requires a lot of cleaning to begin with...and I have been flamed severely for suggesting it.

Kontact

Actually, I absolutely didn't claim that autism has its roots in mineral spirit use, which takes us back to the first point: Either you didn't read, or you can't.

This is where I mention autism. You'll note that I mention it in relation to a host of substances, and I mention it as part of a grouping of ailments of mysterious origin.

Since you're having such trouble understanding, I will explain it to you using simple words:
I think man made organic chemical compounds have often been shown to have connections to illnesses and syndromes that are not immediately lethal. Lacking any substantial laboratory testing of the long term effects of those compounds on genetics, cellular structures, hormone production, etc, and lacking any substantial scientific evidence of the origin of a lengthy list of grossly increasing ailments, I CHOOSE to avoid the potential relationship between those substances and those ailments as much as possible.

"Autism" was given as an example, and so were several other things that you ignored because you thought you read "OMS causes autism". But you didn't, and you only thought you did because you can't read.

Kontact

It isn't often someone posts a textbook example of a strawman, but you have managed to do it, twice.

Saying that something new is suspect is absolutely not the logical companion to saying something old is safe.

Stop putting words in my mouth, or quote where I say mercury is safe.

Asi

Dealing with harsh chemical each day would be a concern and alternatives if available can and should be used.
On the home-user part where you clean a chain a few times a year, going to OMS, acetone, IPA, gasoline, diesel, kerosene, brake fluid, brake cleaner, paint thinner - can be very dangerous if done carelessly or can be used just fine with adequate knowledge (and yes you will get some exposure.. a few times a year.. but i get exposure to lots of stuff like smoking, pollutants in the area, etc. so whatever.. there is a risk in everything in this life. cycling itself is a dangerous sport.. better start playing chess or something - until you get a splinter from a bad polished chess piece and you die from infection). - on the other side home-users are likely to be not knowledgeable enough and not have proper protection and conditions. - so i don't encourage anyone to use any chemicals at all.

So there must be a balance in life.. risks worth taking and advantages doing so. Just for those advantages humanity took leaps of risks for the sake of science.

Using solvents sometimes.. i find that acceptable. Using them all day would raise concerns and will urge people to use cleaner alternatives for day-to day use.
For many of these solvents only the prolonged day to day exposure is worrying. For once in a while with proper care is less of real problem. I make my own fishing weight out of lead pipes melted in a pot on the stove and poured in a mould. I do this very rarely in open environment with my 3M respirator .. last time i did a batch of 2kg like 5years ago and i still have plenty today. Handling lead letters all day in a type-press as a worker will be a major concern.

But again it's a case of the scale that some substances are used. TEL is phased out for a good reason.. there are massive amounts of cars around the world and if all run TEL gasoline would be a disaster. But even so TEL is something still manufactured today for avgas and other niche low run applications.

If the application requires it you can deal with all sort of dangerous stuff. For research in a prototype engine, the best design was to use a depleted uranium counterweight.. so we did. It's a one off so no worry. Handling depleted uranium is not for everyone for sure, but it can be done as safe as possible.