How close to the terrarium can aerosol be sprayed?

[poodude289]

I was just wondering what a safe range is for aerosol being sprayed, I have stuff for cleaning my glasses and other things, usually done in the room next door.

 

[poodude289]

Probably being paranoid about this, I want to be on the safe side.

 

[Eighth Eye Blind]

The only real answer is "it depends". It depends on what you're spraying. It depends on the amount you're spraying. It depends on how often you're spraying it. It depends on how fine of a mist you're using.

As the very old saying goes, dosis venenum facit ("the dose makes the poison"). Tiny, one-off exposures to extremely toxic things can be meaningless. Heavy or repeated exposure to mildly toxic substances can be fatal.

Spritzing your eye glasses with a water-based cleaner once every few days probably isn't going to harm anything in the same room. Water-based stuff really doesn't spread through the air all that well. Most of the droplets from something like a household pump sprayer fall to the floor well before they evaporate and start wafting around the room.

The opposite is true for anything dissolved in a non-aqueous solvent. Things like canned air fresheners or spray paints are designed to create very fine mists that evaporate almost instantly. Those kinds of products typically contain organic solvents and other ingredients in amounts that might be harmless to a 70kg human, but deadly to a 70g T. We also have mechanisms in our airways to trap and eliminate harmful chemicals before they can enter our bloodstreams. T's just absorb everything in the air straight through their book lungs.

A common example of just how bad vaporized organics can be is Teflon poisoning in birds. If you heat a non-stick pan coated with Teflon beyond a certain temp the coating breaks down and starts off-gassing several extremely toxic compounds. This isn't great for humans, but we (usually) aren't affected by it due to our body size and the mucus in our airways. It's absolutely deadly to birds, though, because of how small they are and the structure of their lungs. Overheating a Teflon pan in the kitchen can quickly kill every canary and parakeet in the house. (Safety Tip: Switch to ceramic coated pans instead of Teflon. They work better anyway.)

So, it depends.

The only guarantee is that the dose makes the poison. Less exposure to less toxic stuff is always better than more exposure to more toxic stuff. It's generally a good idea to completely avoid anything that comes pre-pressurized in a can as these tend to contain nasty solvents and produce very fine mists that spread everywhere. At the same time, filling the room air with a water-based cleaner that contains ammonia from a pump sprayer can be just as bad if you do it too much or too often. It just depends.

I know that's not a very satisfying answer. Sorry. The science is too complicated for anything more without getting much, much more specific about what, how, and how much is being sprayed.

 

[m0lsx]

I was just wondering what a safe range is for aerosol being sprayed, I have stuff for cleaning my glasses and other things, usually done in the room next door.

My wife uses moist glasses wipes to clean her glasses. A huge pack costs just £1. So there are cheap alternatives to aerosols.

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[Tarantula Trooper]

This is an easy one!! Don't spray garbage cleaners etc, etc, near your Tarantulas! If U suspect something stay far, far away! Lol. Happy Spoodering!!