CertiGuide to A+ (A+ 4 Real)  9  Chapter 12: Material Safety: a Personal and Technical Report on Hazardous Material Handling       9  Reading and Understanding MSDSs

Section Five - Reactivity Data 1 Section Seven - Toxicological Data

It is in this section that we learn the possible consequences involved by using this product. The section on health hazards should include the routes of exposure (how the substance enters the body), a description of the acute and chronic health adverse effects and the symptoms or signs of those adverse effects.

The ability to detect the onset of an adverse effect in a timely manner can make quite a difference. In acute exposures, longer exposure duration typically equates to a more serious and intense effect. Not only are you absorbing the hazardous substances into your body over a longer period time, but quite often, the concentration levels of the substances also will be increasing over time. Dose rate and effect can escalate at an immensely rapid rate. As an example if the route of exposure is inhalation, each breath that you take not only introduces more of the hazardous substance into your body, but it may also contain more of the substance then the pervious breath.

Even if the single adverse effects of an acute exposure are not of themselves life threatening or serious health consequences, they can become the contributing cause to other work place injuries. The symptoms/effects of dizziness, disorientation, and/or loss of coordination could have serious consequences if you were at the top of a twenty-foot ladder. Therefore, if one day you, while using Tcat’s Unreal Kleen in the confinements of a telephone closet, you find yourself giggling uncontrollably one of your boss’s joke [when none of his joke has even made you crack smile before]. Maybe, just maybe, that would be a good time to come out of the closet and get some fresh air.

Notice the warning “Certain constituents of this product are metabolized by the body into compounds that may cause the gradual numbness and weakness of the hands and feet leading to permanent nerve damage.” Some studies have suggested that it is possible to suffer temporary motor weakness of the hands and feet as a result of an acute exposure. In addition to the acceleration of the narcotic effect, exposure to methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) also intensifies the metabolic processing of n-hexane, leading to a quicker, more pronounced initial motor weakness. And of course, Tcat’s Unreal Kleen contains both, n-hexane and MEK.

Symptoms of peripheral neuropathy (the technical name of adverse effect of n-hexane exposure) develop after a few months to a year of repeated overexposure to n-hexane and severity of nerve damage is related to the duration length and concentration level of the chronic exposure. So, early recognition of chronic adverse effects is because even more crucial.

Because the adverse effects of chronic exposures to many chemicals may take years or even decades to manifest, the early warning symptoms and signs often are not attributed to chemical exposure. A constant ache here and there, the ever-growing irritable bowel, or other seemly normal discomforts of life, not only does the individual tend to overlook these early signs, but the medical profession may also misread them. By the time, you realize something is seriously wrong often it is too late. We have all heard or read of someone, who died of some disease that if it had been caught early, they probably would have survived. Nevertheless, the early stage of the disease only exhibit flu-like symptoms and how do you know when flu-like symptoms is the actually the flu or the onset on a deadly disease. Learning and knowing the chronic health hazards and their symptoms and signs of the chemicals that you are being exposed may enable the recognition of the early warning signs in the future.

Section Five - Reactivity Data 1 Section Seven - Toxicological Data