Desiccants

[Fishbulb2]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a desiccant that does not use cobalt chloride as the indicator. I don't know, I guess I'm just not too comfortable with the dust I see every time I change out my ozone dehumidifier and the possible effects of cobalt. Also we have a 1.5 year old running around and a potential second one on the way. It just seems like an unnecessary risk to me at this point if there are suitable alternatives.

I see a couple of options and wanted to know if anyone had experience with these. The first is to use no indicator and just go with silica gel. I don't like this option because I'll never know when to recharge the gel. The other two options I found were orange silica gel with methyl violet as the indicator and a product called Sorbead which has an organic indicator. Both claim to be non-toxic. Has anyone used one of these or would not recommend them for any reason?

Thanks guys I really appreciate it,
FB

[bertoni]

I've never used any of those products. I am not sure that I'd consider methyl violet safer than cobalt chloride. The MSDS for the SorBead product that I saw mentioned cobalt chloride. Can you provide a pointer to the product you found?

Personally, I wouldn't worry very much about the cobalt chloride in the desiccant.

[Fishbulb2]

Hi Bertoni,

Thanks for the response. I'm surprised you think that methyl violet might be as dangerous as cobalt chloride. I couldn't find this when I was researching this topic. The links to Sorbead that first got me interested in this was

http://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/02-15.pdf

and ultimately I found the MSDS here that I didn't see cobalt listed.

http://www.deltaadsorbents.com/sorbead-silica-gel-desiccant.html

I was looking at the Chameleon version.

Let me know what you think of these links.

FB

[bertoni]

Okay, there are different types of SorBead. I think the SorBead Orange might in theory be a bit safer than the products containing cobalt chloride, although I'm not sure it'll make much difference in practice.

[disc1]

There are several different very similar dyes that all get generally called Methyl Violet. They are all mutagens and carcinogens to some degree. They intercalate into DNA molecules and disrupt the replication process.

Either way you go, I would make dam sure that the babies can't get into it. Treat it like you would drain cleaner. Even without the indicator, there is a reason why silica gel packets say "Do Not Eat" on them.