Health concerns regarding materials in harmonicas?
Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2018 2:02 pm
I would like to talk about the various materials used in our instruments. As we go about not only pressing them to our lips, but also ingesting whatever dissolves into the saliva, which goes back and forth into the harp as we blow and draw for hours a week all year around.
When it comes to food packing, there are regulations as to which materials are allowed for which sorts of food, but despite searching high and low I have not found any similar discussion on musical instruments. People, myself included, will take anything they find lying about, maybe clean it, and happily put it in their mouth just to get that feeling of utter delight we all know comes from making an interesting sound. The materials range from definitely non-food safe plastics to electric components and solder, all of which may over time have negative side effects.
Home tinkering is one thing, but neither established manufacturers seem to pay much mind to their materials, or at least they don't expect their customers to care. Take Seydel for instance, a great company in many respects. Their Orchestra S, Session Antique and others have a comb made of some unspecified "plastic", and their De Luxe Steel has a comb of acrylic, the latter not considered a food safe material even by the plastic industry (see for instance https://www.directplastics.co.uk/about_ ... g-plastics).
The three most common materials in harps are plastic, metal and wood, the latter often coated or otherwise treated with plastic or similar materials.
Plastics are very complex materials, whose precise composition are determined by the raw oil used, the extraction process, treatments to give certain properties and post processing such as coating. These steps, which each may add, remove or modify compounds, are most often carried out by different agents, so getting a good grasp of the precise contents of a particular product often requires some careful lab work. To then determine which components actually may leak out is yet another complicated question, and even if we find out it is often not obvious what this actually means in terms of health. Many substances have poorly understood biological behaviours, and the impact of the various combinations (so called cocktail effects), especially for consistent low dosages over very long timescales, are often mere guesswork. The plastics that ARE considered food safe are those whose released substances are not proven to be short-term harmful on their own. A good example is BPA, a compound which has received recent attention as scientists demonstrate harmful effects. The industry respond to this, but often they just replace the BPA by BPF, BPS or some other very similar compound which has not yet been as well studied. Though it is not clear that the product is safer, they can now proclaim the product "BPA-free" and thereby often even raise the price. I've seen studies where the content of certain chemicals from popular plastics in blood samples from Americans successfully predict how much plastic coated fast food someone eats (paper around food is coated with plastic as a rule).
I have several times noted that if I let a plastic harp lie in a not-that-ventilated space it gets a certain smell/taste which makes it unpleasant to play, and no cleaning I've tried gets it away. A while back I met someone at an event who had a bag of rather new Seydel Session Steel, and when I tried one it had a distinct taste of plastic. Experiences such as these make me uneasy, and I wonder what my dear hobby is doing to my long term health.
Metals are less complex, but there are still issues. For one we all know about heavy metals, such as lead, and that it's generally a very bad idea to ingest them. I've also heard some people being upset about aluminium in food cans, but as a layman it is hard to get a good grasp on how founded these complaints are. My main concern about metals, which is also valid for plastics, is that the company that made the slab that eventually became a read plate or a comb or whatever probably did not have in mind that someone would put their product into their moth for several hours a day. As an illustration, Blue Moon Harmonicas (which I have only positive experiences with!) state that they make combs out of architectural brass or aircraft grade aluminium, but the fact that a material is developed to be a good choice in aircrafts is not very reassuring from a health perspective, at least to me. There are also the suggested links between Alzheimer and aluminium in drinking water: How much of this stuff actually gets into our bodies as we play?
I often see metal parts coated with something shiny I don't know what it is, and on other non-harmonica products I've seen similar coating come off in small sheets. There is also the solder often recommended for retuning. Though solder is nowadays often lead-free, it may contain different flux agents and/or impurities. At some point I suppose most formulas are evaluated from a health perspective, but this evaluation hardly has harmonica players in mind. (I will not even go into the electronic components and circuit boards in an ELX electric harmonica.)
Wood I would consider safe under most circumstances, but the various furnishes and ubiquitous wood-composite materials raise the same questions as the above mentioned plastic.
As harmonica players we sit in a very special situation. Even though some other instruments are made from questionable materials we are rather unique in that we even inhale through ours. We here at this forum are especially affected as the various cool innovations that we love are often realised using found materials, improvised tools and 3D printers.
So: How do you all feel about these things? Do you have any thoughts, comments, worries or reassurances? I realise this post is very long, and you don't need to react to it all; any short comment would be welcome! I just hope to raise the question and hopefully get some discussion going, as I currently feel rather alone in my worries.
When it comes to food packing, there are regulations as to which materials are allowed for which sorts of food, but despite searching high and low I have not found any similar discussion on musical instruments. People, myself included, will take anything they find lying about, maybe clean it, and happily put it in their mouth just to get that feeling of utter delight we all know comes from making an interesting sound. The materials range from definitely non-food safe plastics to electric components and solder, all of which may over time have negative side effects.
Home tinkering is one thing, but neither established manufacturers seem to pay much mind to their materials, or at least they don't expect their customers to care. Take Seydel for instance, a great company in many respects. Their Orchestra S, Session Antique and others have a comb made of some unspecified "plastic", and their De Luxe Steel has a comb of acrylic, the latter not considered a food safe material even by the plastic industry (see for instance https://www.directplastics.co.uk/about_ ... g-plastics).
The three most common materials in harps are plastic, metal and wood, the latter often coated or otherwise treated with plastic or similar materials.
Plastics are very complex materials, whose precise composition are determined by the raw oil used, the extraction process, treatments to give certain properties and post processing such as coating. These steps, which each may add, remove or modify compounds, are most often carried out by different agents, so getting a good grasp of the precise contents of a particular product often requires some careful lab work. To then determine which components actually may leak out is yet another complicated question, and even if we find out it is often not obvious what this actually means in terms of health. Many substances have poorly understood biological behaviours, and the impact of the various combinations (so called cocktail effects), especially for consistent low dosages over very long timescales, are often mere guesswork. The plastics that ARE considered food safe are those whose released substances are not proven to be short-term harmful on their own. A good example is BPA, a compound which has received recent attention as scientists demonstrate harmful effects. The industry respond to this, but often they just replace the BPA by BPF, BPS or some other very similar compound which has not yet been as well studied. Though it is not clear that the product is safer, they can now proclaim the product "BPA-free" and thereby often even raise the price. I've seen studies where the content of certain chemicals from popular plastics in blood samples from Americans successfully predict how much plastic coated fast food someone eats (paper around food is coated with plastic as a rule).
I have several times noted that if I let a plastic harp lie in a not-that-ventilated space it gets a certain smell/taste which makes it unpleasant to play, and no cleaning I've tried gets it away. A while back I met someone at an event who had a bag of rather new Seydel Session Steel, and when I tried one it had a distinct taste of plastic. Experiences such as these make me uneasy, and I wonder what my dear hobby is doing to my long term health.
Metals are less complex, but there are still issues. For one we all know about heavy metals, such as lead, and that it's generally a very bad idea to ingest them. I've also heard some people being upset about aluminium in food cans, but as a layman it is hard to get a good grasp on how founded these complaints are. My main concern about metals, which is also valid for plastics, is that the company that made the slab that eventually became a read plate or a comb or whatever probably did not have in mind that someone would put their product into their moth for several hours a day. As an illustration, Blue Moon Harmonicas (which I have only positive experiences with!) state that they make combs out of architectural brass or aircraft grade aluminium, but the fact that a material is developed to be a good choice in aircrafts is not very reassuring from a health perspective, at least to me. There are also the suggested links between Alzheimer and aluminium in drinking water: How much of this stuff actually gets into our bodies as we play?
I often see metal parts coated with something shiny I don't know what it is, and on other non-harmonica products I've seen similar coating come off in small sheets. There is also the solder often recommended for retuning. Though solder is nowadays often lead-free, it may contain different flux agents and/or impurities. At some point I suppose most formulas are evaluated from a health perspective, but this evaluation hardly has harmonica players in mind. (I will not even go into the electronic components and circuit boards in an ELX electric harmonica.)
Wood I would consider safe under most circumstances, but the various furnishes and ubiquitous wood-composite materials raise the same questions as the above mentioned plastic.
As harmonica players we sit in a very special situation. Even though some other instruments are made from questionable materials we are rather unique in that we even inhale through ours. We here at this forum are especially affected as the various cool innovations that we love are often realised using found materials, improvised tools and 3D printers.
So: How do you all feel about these things? Do you have any thoughts, comments, worries or reassurances? I realise this post is very long, and you don't need to react to it all; any short comment would be welcome! I just hope to raise the question and hopefully get some discussion going, as I currently feel rather alone in my worries.