Just say no to fiberglass insulation

I notice a lot of people recommend fiberglass insulation for building acoustical products such as bass traps etc. The problem with the stuff is it the glass gets in your skin, lungs, eyes, or whatever and also contains craploads of toxic chemicals like formaldahyde, etc that have been shown to cause cancer with prolonged exposure.

I recall reading a book by F. Alton Everest a decade or so ago where he mentioned having acoustically treated a recording studio (I think it was in Africa) with cotton. If I recall correctly, he said that cotton has superior acoustical absorption compared to fiberglass, but he didn't recommend it because it was not readily available in an acoustically consistent form in the U.S.. Well, I don't know, its been a long time ago, but I remember it going something like that anyways.

You know Alton passed away last year at the ripe ol' age of 95, and since he wrote that book (Master Handbook of Acoustics) a few things have changed. So I went over to The Environmental Home Center in Seattle and picked up some cotton insulation batts. http://www.environmentalhomecenter.com/shop.mv?CatCode=PRODUCT&ProdCode=COTTON_INSULATION

After installing these things in the wall I realized how superior to fiberglass this stuff is. This brand uses Borax as a fire retardant and mold inhibitor, so you should use a mask while you install it (it's powdery), but truthfully the borax is extremely non-toxic. It just gets in the air a little while you work with it. Once it is in place and covered, it stays put.

Edit: This brand is a little spendy: http://www.soundprooffoam.com/quiet-batt-insulation.html Personally, I like my R-21 stuff and it costs a lot less but the site provides some acoustical data on the R-19: http://www.soundprooffoam.com/pdf/Quiet-Batt-Insulation.pdf

From my experience this stuff is superior to fiberglass batts in every way except cutting it. But if you use the recommended tools (or just by the special saw for cutting it) you will have no problems there either. Personally, I just used a regular hand saw, and it worked fine.

Oh, yeah, if you do a web search, you'll find cotton batts are available pretty much everywhere these days.

:grin:

According to wikipedia:

(sodium borate = borax)

"Boric acid, sodium borate, and sodium perborate are estimated to have a fatal dose from 0.1 to 0.5g/kg.[5] These substances are toxic to all cells, and have a slow excretion rate through the kidneys. Kidney toxicity is the greatest, with liver fatty degeneration, cerebral edema, and gastroenteritis. Boric acid solutions used as an eye wash or on abraded skin are known to be especially toxic to infants, especially after repeated use due to its slow elimination"

I don't know how much you would breathe unprotected, but since it has slow elimination, it can build up. Using .1g/kg, a 9g dose is fatal for a 200 lb person. And what effects do less-than-fatal doses have?

Thoughts?

Make sure you buy a mask that is rated for particulate filtration and not a comfort mask! I often see people wearing comfort masks when working with toxic materials. Comfort masks are only designed for things such as household dust, pollen and cut grass. A respirator with changeable filters is better.

On a lighter note, how is that book? I'd like to pick up a book on acoustics.

I totally agree. When I had our 65 year old furnace replaced I insisted on no fiberglass around the heat ducting and the workers said it was a superior choice to use the plastic and foil insulation (forgot the term for this type of insulation). It saved space and looks much better, no health concerns, and cost only 10 % more.

Also, don't use polyurethane foam in your studio for sound insulation. It off-gasses and eventually decays and crumbles. The best insulation with the least health concern I found is actually hanging blankets and cotton bed pads on the walls and ceiling, and natural wool and cotton throw rugs on the floor. You can adjust the sound absorbtion this way, and remove it when not recording and your space again is like a regular room. Or build or buy gobos or half height acoustic separators. The best principle is to use something that you can pick up with your hands and move around, or put in the garage when not needed!

[quote author="Mailliw"]According to wikipedia:

(sodium borate = borax)

"Boric acid, sodium borate, and sodium perborate are estimated to have a fatal dose from 0.1 to 0.5g/kg.[5]

Make sure you buy a mask that is rated for particulate filtration and not a comfort mask! I often see people wearing comfort masks when working with toxic materials. Comfort masks are only designed for things such as household dust, pollen and cut grass. A respirator with changeable filters is better.

On a lighter note, how is that book? I'd like to pick up a book on acoustics.[/quote]

Thanks for pointing that out. It appears it is ok to use but you should definitely limit how much you breath in, and certainly don't eat any. Also, I would think you would have to use a fairly tight cloth as a cover so the dust can't make it through the outside of your bass traps. The cloth could introduce a certain amount of reflectivity into your design?

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/infoservices/pesticidefactsheets/leasttoxic/boricacid_borates_borax.htm

The MSDS on the brand of insulation I bought indicates that the product will not chronically harm you, but it will screw you up if you eat a large amount of it. It mentions an inhalation risk, but does not indicate it can lead to chronic health problems. Still, I would use a real mask as opposed to one of those paper counterfeits. I'll probably see if I can find a non-boric acid version. But I think it is illegal to sell it if it does not have some sort of fire redardant addes. Here is the MSDS, which indicates its pretty non-toxic, I wouldn't want to install the stuff for a living though.

http://www.echoeliminator.com/ultra_touch/pdf/msds/MSDS_Ultra.pdf

Fiberglass insulation typically makes me very sick to be around unless I use the Owens Corning or Johns Manville Formaldehyde free products. From my experience, they outgass way less toxic crap than their more mainstream siblings. But you still end up with the glass all over you. The Owen's Corning is wrapped and uses "soft cotton-like glass" so it is less of a problem though. It is unbound and kind of like the glass used in the plant that got shut down discussed by Roger but not as good as I certainly would not rub the Owen's Corning on my face.

I think the "Master Handbook of Acoustics" book is excellent. It has been a long time since I read it, but I was fascinated by the entire thing. It's about 20 bucks shipped for a good used one at amazon, so I'd say it is definitely worth the price.

For basement insulation, I used rockwool, you still need breathing protection to install but there are fewer additives needed, and its flammability properties are excellent.

It sounds like they add a plasticiser to the glass used for insulation now. Great idea.

[quote author="tommypiper"]

Also, don't use polyurethane foam in your studio for sound insulation. It off-gasses and eventually decays and crumbles. [/quote]

What do you mean by "It off-gasses"?

[quote author="khstudio"][quote author="tommypiper"]

Also, don't use polyurethane foam in your studio for sound insulation. It off-gasses and eventually decays and crumbles. [/quote]

What do you mean by "It off-gasses"?[/quote]

It releases volatile organic compounds.

>>>What do you mean by "It off-gasses"?

'Out-gas' is the more proper term I believe. Its from the formaldehyde, I would think. Over time that stuff will make almost anyone sick and it affects some people in the short term.

A lot of foams don't meet fire code.

Rock wool would be the most safe, I would think, being that it is a natural fiber. Probably in any of this stuff its not so much the material that is harmful as much as it is the crap they add to it to make it flame-retardant.

Breathing air has been known to cause cancer and death. :razz: :razz: :razz:

WOW :shock:

I have a fair amount of Auralex foam in my studio... it's been there for years & I must say...too much time in the studio makes me feel funny :?

[quote author="khstudio"]WOW :shock:

I have a fair amount of Auralex foam in my studio... it's been there for years & I must say...too much time in the studio makes me feel funny :?[/quote]

That is quite interesting. If the foam smells pretty chemically strong, it is still outgassing at a decent rate. If it smells fairly inert, then I would look for other possible culprits in an attempt to narrow down what is making you feel odd when you spend large amounts of time in the room.

A person has to be concious of their overall toxic load in the body in our modern age because bioaccumulation leads to DNA mutation. Many people don't take it seriously, but that's because the mechanics lull one into not paying much attention until it is too late.

People are able to abuse their bodies for decades with seemingly no ill affects. But the funny thing about chronic disease is that you just don't get it one day when you start to get symptoms. You typically start building your disease profile for decades prior to that. When it finally manifests in chronic symptoms, your body has finally decided it cannot continue to battle off the assault anymore. At that point, the weak spots on your DNA have broken down and your DNA has mutated. Of course, this is when people typically first get serious about battling whatever disease was coded into their weak spots, but unfortunately, at that point it is a much more difficult battle to win than it would have been before the DNA mutated.

The human body is a cell signaling machine, and these signals are influenced by the fuel they use--blood. When you alter your blood content, you alter the signaling environment that the cells exist in so it is a no brainer that this has an effect upon your health prognosis. Also specific toxins get uptaken and bind with different parts of the cells and this can cause the cells to malfunction over time. So while toxins are certainly not the end all of disease prevention, they do play a very important role and should not be completely ignored over the course of one's life.

Actually DNA mutations are common and are typically not so bad because the cells undergo apoptosis (immune system sees they are screwed up and kills them). But the problem is, when DNA mutates, the cells continue to make faulty copies of themselves. And this really is notable in diseases such as cancer. In this disease, the cells that make the copies of screwy cells are stem cells, thus they are protected from apoptosis (cell death). So we might blast the heck out of a tumor, but unless we can get the stem cells that are supplying the tumor (very hard to target and kill), the tumor shrinks but it eventually comes back. IOW, the big tumor is mostly full of cells that can't hurt you, and those cells are killed by the medical treatment. But those cells are not the important ones to kill. You have to kill the rogue cancer stem cells that have mutated DNA, and they are protected from cell death. Thus, cancer is turning out to be not as easy to cure as many people predicted a decade or two ago.

So at the moment, the best cure known for disease right now is prevention.

Interestingly, most people will religiously change the oil in their vehicles, yet they will scoff at the notion of performing any kind of disease prevention maintenance on their own bodies. I guess in the final analysis we are much less important than the vehicles we drive.

Hi Guys,

i've been looking into this sort of thing too, it's been suggested to me that "acoustisorb 3" by tontine is the best stuff to use - it is made from 'polyester' which is what bed linings and clothes / furniture are made of - it's best feature is that it has no loose fibres or itching of any kind - so you can move it around to tune your traps. i have even heard of people sleeping on it after a long night in the studio. It is definetly worth a little extra cost. you dont even need gloves to handle it.

it is fireproofed to a similar standard that glasswool is.

If you are paranoid about fire though (like me) rock wool is what you want to use in your roof (glasswool ignites at 220deg - rockwool at 1100 deg)

[quote author="originalmusician"][quote author="khstudio"]WOW :shock:

I have a fair amount of Auralex foam in my studio... it's been there for years & I must say...too much time in the studio makes me feel funny :?[/quote]

That is quite interesting. If the foam smells pretty chemically strong, it is still outgassing at a decent rate. If it smells fairly inert, then I would look for other possible culprits in an attempt to narrow down what is making you feel odd when you spend large amounts of time in the room.[/quote]

Polyurethane foam is classified in this list:
http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/crthgr03.php
So no categoric answer yet.
But maybe the Λurαlex special adhesive could be reponsible of the «funny» effect too.

There has been a lot of discussions about this subject. What I remember having read in a medical (!) journal was that the rockwool fibres are so small that the can´t be removed out of the loung by it´s "autocleaningmechanism". The fibreglass fibres are 10 times larger than the rockwool fibres and are big enough that the loung can transport them out of the loung. The fibres are basically a threat when they stay in the loung because they act like knifes and cut the cells apart. Hence I´d recommend fibreglass but no way rockwool. The best solution from a health point-of-view is to use natural material: wool, hemp, cork,.... Nothing dangerous ever happens with these materials. Most of these natural materials have little (but only little) worse damping factors than their counterparts. But if you know about that you can deal with it. Positive thing about the natural stuff is that it improves the roomclimate because humidity is stored and kept on an equal level.

To avoid all health issues and have excellent isolation I recently used Homatherm FlexCL. It's made of old newspapers and sold in hardware stores specialized in organic materials. Don't know if it is availible outside central Europe though.

[quote author="laitue5"]

Polyurethane foam is classified in this list:
http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/crthgr03.php
So no categoric answer yet.
But maybe the Λurαlex special adhesive could be reponsible of the «funny» effect too.[/quote]

One of the problems with chemical classificiations is that they test the substance in mono. The thing about chemicals is that they interact with each other, and there has been very little testing where multiple chemicals are put into the body over a long course of time and the cell expressions are observed. It is hard to know what to do, so I try to make the best choice I can, and then not worry about it. That fiberfill stuff in the other post sounds pretty good. Isn't that the same stuff they put in sleeping bags?

It's funny, when everybody is talking about fiberglass insulation, it's always the stuff that should be BETWEEN the walls in a double room partition, or, inside the wall in a single wall design. Therefore, it should only be exposed while constructing or demolishing a studio.

The stuff that is more exposed (and excell in sound absorbtion) is usually rigid fiberboard, of the OC703/JM1000 type. It's fibers are densely packed and, if installed properly, is usually covered in some type of cloth that traps and filters any loose fibers behind it.

But if you look above the drop ceiling in just about ANY commercial installation, studio or other wise and there is rolled fiberglass up there. And the HVAC systems are hardly sealed, so there is all sorts of particles blowing around.
When using the natural materials in walls, it is important to follow building codes in a commercial install. That polyfill is great in a speaker but an explosive fireball when sealed in a wall. We insulated the walls of our house with a blown-in product that was made from recycled paper that was treated to be fire-proof. It may be the borax product mentioned earlier. Made the heating bills go down about 20%. A real noticable difference.
I would question the health practices of many people I have known in the commercial recording business. Their personal habits have made a or will make them sick long before any building materials. And the continuous proximity to all the electronic equipment and fields that it generates. Ever try to use an AM radio in a studio?
Mike

I remember finding a dead rat in the bale of blow in type cotton fiber...... black plauge anyone?
If you are building a commercial facility, most codes require fire "proof" materials, ASTM rated (Great White anyone?)
All currently manufactured ductboard (in the US) has a webbing on the surface to contain fibers
Use the correct resparator and saftey equipment, filter the air in the site after construction to remove airborne particles, and always have a fresh air supply on the HVAC system!

So I'm a little confused is it the Owens Corning type 703 2" 2x4 sheets of rigid fiberglass that are bad for you? This is what most acoustical and bass traps I have seen in studios are made with. It is covered with a loose thread muslin or burlap type material. I have read that they can have a thin layer of fiberfill between the board and the outer fabric to contain an particles?? I was actually just planning to buy some for my studio and make some traps. I don't want to if it's going to make me sick working in there everyday.