Health warning!!

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BuildsByBaz

Sr Member
Perhaps this should be a sticky? Not sure if it belongs here but if not, mods feel free to move it somewhere appropriate.

This is a warning to anyone out there who wants to weld your cosplay suit and chooses to ignore precautions thinking it will never happen to you. I knew the dangers and took what I thought were adequate precautions by opening up the workshop to the wind. Obviously not enough. My own stupid fault but please take heed, it could have been a lot worse.

Please Google galvanising poisoning. In fact, Google poisoning of any material you are using. Glue, Resin, Fibreglass, Bondo, Rondo, even you foam builders out there heating up your foam with heat guns and soldering irons. LOOK IT UP!

Here's my horror story.

I got a bad hit of galvanising poisoning a while back while welding and oxy-cutting heavy bridge beams in a large workshop. Welding all day with three roller doors open but it wasn't enough. Left work feeling like I had been licking a block of chalk all day and feeling slightly wrong.

Worst night of my life. I felt like I was literally going to die. Pain. So much pain. Cold chills, hot saturate-the-bedsheets sweat, locked joints, aching muscles, felt bruised all over like I had been run over by a truck. Every part of my body was screaming at me, "WTF did you do to me!!??" Spent two hours running the hot water system out of hot water sitting curled up on the shower floor in agony. 9pm first symptoms, 2:30 am passed out.
9am next morning - good as gold like nothing had happened.

I NEVER, EVER want to go through that again.

Perhaps if any of my fellow cosplay builders have experienced any kind of ill effects from materials or processes, you could share here as warning to others?
 
I knew you could get galvanising poisoning but never knew what it did :-/

I think the worst iv done is set fire to my trousers with my mig welder, burning my leg. I was silly enough to be "blink welding" at the time and when I felt my leg burning I opened by eyes before I had stopped welding giving my self arc eye :-(
 
This happened to me early on in my work life. I was welding pipes and framework. I was mistakenly welding galvanized metals and became deathly I'll for several days. It's not something that you can avoid. I now wear a Rebreather while welding questionable metals. Also while stick welding it's recommended as they have recently linked it with neurological Damaged.

Sent from my 831C using Tapatalk
 
Galvanising poisoning as in, zinc oxide poisoning? Yeah, I'd go get checked out too- from what I remember of the various standard metalworkers' horror stories it causes brain damage followed by death. Not necessarily from a short exposure like that, but I don't remember exactly and it's probably better to be on the safe side. There might be a heavy metal detox flush they have you do or something.

Hope you stay better! And hope other people learn to pay attention to what they're heating up!
 
It's a very serious issue and should be mandatory FAQ. Anyone familiar with WHMIS will understand.
 
This is a serious issue and worthy of a sticky... but... we have found that people tend to blow right past stickied items (something similar to how you get ad-blindness and that threads actually get more attention NOT being stickied than if they were.
 
Bump. Just to keep folks aware of the dangers of our various cosplay trades. Good to keep reminding folks.
 
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