[BC] PCB and other hazards

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

I don't think that are many smelly substitutes. However,
do you remember the smell of phenolic PC boards?

That "wonderful electronic" aroma you'd get when
repairing old Zenith TV sets! The smell comes
from phenol, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol .

That same material is what causes the smell
of PCBs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychlorinated_biphenyl

The Wikipedia entry uses the word "congener" claiming
them as odorless and tasteless. Warning; "cogener" is
a trick word, meaning generated together which seems
to imply that PCBs are odorless, which is untrue.

RCA made a dummy-load that was a large brown steel
tank with a pump mounted to the same platform. This
tank was filled with Askerel, a PCB and it was what
circulated around the load resistor. The tank contained
a coil of water tubing as a hear exchanger. All of the
Bird loads that I remember had direct immersion of
the load resistor in the water coolant, or (for UHF)
no load resistor at all.


--
Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson


  -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Mark Humphrey" <mark3xy at gmail.com>
>I've probably smelled PCBs without realizing they were the source of 
>the odor.  Richard said, "basically, if it smells, it may contain 
>PCBs" but I would like to know how many of the substitutes are also as  smelly.
>
>In the course of rebuilding it, I drained the oil, which was dark 
>green, rather thick, and very smelly.  Orange sludge had been 
>deposited in the bottom, around the resistor and the conical shield 
>surrounding it, perhaps some kind of copper compound.  According to 
>Bird's website, they have never used PCBs in any of their products, so