[Elecraft] OT: Transformer oil in DL's

[Milt, N5IA]

And I have to totally agree with Ken.  I have the same experience.  Career 40+ years in power distribution.

If you really want the "rest of the story", do a search on Google or other search engine for "Death of Humas by PCB Polychlorinated Biphenyl's".  I don't think you will find anything.

Feeding hundreds of times a normal "dose" of PCB to laboratory rats or a LOOOOONG time period showed the following:  Quote

"Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are among the most widespread and persistent pollutants in the global environment. Coplanar and noncoplanar PCBs have been shown to cause congener-specific apoptosis mediated neurotoxicity in rats. 

Very few, if any, such studies have been reported on human renal cell toxicity. The authors report here caspase-dependent or caspase-independent renal toxicity, as measured by apoptotic death induced by PCBs, depending on the planarity of congeners PCB-77 (coplanar) and PCB-153 (noncoplanar) in human kidney cells (HK2) in vitro. The authors have combined morphological and biological techniques to discover the relevance of apoptosis in renal proximal tubule cell death induced by these two PCB congeners. Treatment with both PCB congeners caused accelerated apoptosis in a time- and concentration-dependent manner. 

Based on our findings using human kidney (HK2) cells, there was more apoptosis-mediated loss of cell viability by non-ortho-substituted PCB-77 when compared to PCB-153. A significant increase of caspase-3 expression through immunoblot studies showed the involvement of apoptosis by PCB-77 compared to none by PCB-153. The broad-spectrum caspase inhibitor z-VAD-fmk showed increased cell death when treated by PCB-153, but not by PCB-77, confirming that caspase inhibitor induced a switch in the mode of cell death. It is reasonable to assume that apoptotic cell death in the renal proximal tubule cells treated by PCBs may have both caspase-dependent and caspase-independent pathways."

They don't quote the amount of TIME and the CONCENTRATION.  I cannot find record of, and have never heard of, a human being suffering death or even sickness due to normal exposure to fluids containing PCBs.

However, by the Stockholm Convention worldwide (2001) and the US Congress in the USA (1979), billions of dollars have been spent testing, labeling, replacing and buring or destroying power distribution equipment which were "contaminated" with but a few PPM of PCB in the dielectric fluids.

The capacitors, transformers and oil which were removed from the distribution system which I worked for are now buried deep inside a rock mountain in Nevada at a great expense.

And the fluids which replaced the PCB fluids cost a whole lot more and were less effective (less dielectric strength).

Do your own research and draw your own conclusions regarding PCBs.  YMMV.

73 de Milt, N5IA



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ken Kopp" <k0pp at rfwave.net>
To: "Dave New, N8SBE" <n8sbe at arrl.net>; "Ken Nicely" <ken at nicelyweb.com>
Cc: <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2010 12:44 PM
Subject: [Elecraft] OT: Transformer oil in DL's


> As a (retired) career power company employee I can say with 
> reasonable certainty that the "transformer oil" that was available 
> to --most-- scrounging hams since the introduction of the Cantenna 
> was -unlikely- to contain PCB's.  
> 
> At least in the circumstances familiar to me, PCB-containing
> transformer oil was mostly long gone by the time the Cantenna
> was introduced.  It was certainly gone "as new" out of the barrel,
> but did remain in transformers already in place, but few if any
> hams received their oil from a transformer. (:-)
> 
> It doesn't "make it right", but we had transformer shop employees
> that literally stood chest deep in the stuff inside large substation
> transformers when they were overhauled or a tap needed changed.
> 
> 73! Ken Kopp - K0PP
>     ElecraftCovers at rfwave.net