Room Acoustics Forum by Rives Audio Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share you ideas and experiences.

---

[ Follow Ups ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Room Acoustics Forum by Rives Audio ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

Re: fiberglass health problem

Posted by David Aiken (A) on April 17, 2005 at 12:05:53

In Reply to: Re: fiberglass health problem posted by Ethan Winer on April 17, 2005 at 06:02:31:

As someone who used to work in occupational health and safety, I think your statement that "So as long as you take minimal precautions and wrap the fiberglass with fabric, you'll have nothing to worry about" is not a good representation of what the American Lung Association link is stating, and I think the information there is quite reasonable.

What you have to realise is that in normal - ie non-audio - use, fibreglass insulation is very well sealed away from people with solid wall and ceiling barriers preventing dissemination of fibres into the breathing zone if the insulation starts to shed.

Used in DIY acoustic treatments in someone's living room, the picture MAY be different. A lot depends on the sort of fibreglass used and the stiff bonded panels that you recommend are a very different animal to the fluffy batts used in making the sort of panels and tube bass traps described in Jon Risch's instructions. I don't believe it is sufficient to simply wrap batt style insulation in fabric as batts shed fibres very easily and the fibres are fine enough to penetrate fabric pores and escape into the room airspace where they can easily be inhaled. I think Jon's recommendation that batt style insulation be wrapped with polyester batting first is the minimum safety precaution to be taken. I actually made my traps from polyester and polyester/wool blend batts in order to avoid having fibreglass batt style insulation within the actual room.

I don't know about how likely the fibreglass bonded panels are to shed, but they would be significantly less likely to shed than the batts. Still, wrapping them with polyester batting may be justified in some cases - it would depend on the degree of handling and abrasion that the fibreglass gets exposed to in use.

The other factor which I think needs to be considered in this kind of use is that while the audiophile is quite at liberty to make decisions about what they expose themselves to, they also need to be aware that their choices are determining the exposure to which their partners, children, and others sharing the house will be exposed. I would be particularly cautious where children, especially young children, are involved for 3 reasons. First young children are 'rough' on furniture and houses, and normal play and curiosity may result in acoustic treatments getting much more handling than would be the case in an adults-only house. That may result in more fibre shedding than would otherwise be the case and the fibre levels that everyone in the house are exposed to as a result may be much higher than normal. Secondly, I would be concerned that exposure levels for young children whose noses are much closer to the floor and who routinely play sitting or lying on floor are likely to be much higher because any fibres released are likely to settle on the floor and then be disturbed again during play. Finally I wonder whether young lungs which are still developing may be more prone to damage from fibre exposure - the occupational data used in setting work exposure levels comes from adult exposure and I doubt there is any data on whether or not childhood exposure has a different level of impact.

All fibreglass should come with safety information and that information should be followed, especially whilst constructing acoustic treatments. I would keep others out of the workroom whilst working with fibreglass and also vacuum all surfaces in the area thoroughly after finishing each work period. Users should also remember that fibreglass insulation is intended to be placed in locations where it is sealed away from house inhabitants once it has been installed. The level of separation from inhabitants when it is used inside a room for acoustic purposes is much less than that provided when the products are used thermal insulation in the normal way, and it does make sense to try and compensate for that difference when deciding how to wrap it when using it for in-room acoustic treatments, especially if the finished products are going to be subject to handling to any great degree.

David Aiken

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

WEET Music Caps

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---