Laser printers might be deadly

CB Droege 3 Aug, 2007 at 2:18pm ET Article published in Tech

A team at the Queensland University of Technology has found that some laser printers spend their days emitting lung-clogging, potentially carcinogenic, toner particles. People who work around laser printers everyday might be at risk.

The team discovered the danger by accident. Since then, they’ve stopped working next to their own printers, and have developed plans to push legislation through to encourage printer manufacturers to regulate these emissions.

c|net

Comments

3 Aug 2007 ~ 2:23pm primesuspect Oh I'm so screwed. We laser print for a living. We have a ~400 cubic foot Xeikon, which is a giant laser printer, in the next room spewing out cancer all day, and I sit three feet away from two gigantic, high speed, print production laser printers all day every day.

Yay!
3 Aug 2007 ~ 2:35pm CB I knew you'd like this one...
3 Aug 2007 ~ 3:08pm QCH

primesuspect wrote:

Oh I'm so screwed. We laser print for a living. We have a ~400 cubic foot Xeikon, which is a giant laser printer, in the next room spewing out cancer all day, and I sit three feet away from two gigantic, high speed, print production laser printers all day every day.

Yay!

Hey Prime, can I have your camera if you kick the bucket (not this bucket )?

I'm sure there are some adverse effects to breathing in toner... the question is how much does it take to really raise your chances of getting sick...
3 Aug 2007 ~ 3:24pm BuddyJ HP has raised the BS flag saying that their products (all but one of the group tested in the study) are safe.
4 Aug 2007 ~ 3:24am Leonardo I would be skeptical of any study like this one until there are several others corroborating the findings. All these horrible, horrible, nasty, terrible things...and average life spans keep going up and up and up. I know, that sounds like a simpleton's rant, but there's truth to it.
4 Aug 2007 ~ 3:28am Leonardo

The particles have not had a full chemical analysis, but some are potential carcinogens

Not exactly definitive, reproducible science. Maybe they are on to something, maybe not. Sometimes the alarm bells are valid - cigarettes, for example. Sometimes the dire warnings turn out to be so much tempest in a teapot - power line radiation and "cancer causing" saccharin sweetener.