Chapter XXXIV: Use of Inflammable or Spirit Paints

Inflammable paints have only come into use within the last twenty years. Known in the trade as _quickly drying, composite_ or _spirit_ paints, they are principally used for painting the interior of ships that put into dock and which the owners can only allow to stay there for two or three days. By their use a ship can be painted and turned out of dock according to the number of men put on to do the work in from one to three days. To the owners of modern steam-ships time is money, and consequently there has grown up of late a considerable demand for these paints. It is in the drying of the ordinary oil-paint that there occurs delay not only in regard to the laying on of a second coating, but in the utilisation of the painted spaces afterwards. With these quickly drying paints it is quite otherwise. Mr James H. Edwards, formerly of Messrs Edwards, ship repairers, South Shields, informs me that in half-an-hour or thereabouts after the first coating of spirit paint has been put on another layer can be applied. They are used more in the painting of old than of new boats. Instead of being ground with oil, the colours are mixed with methylated or petroleum spirit, or with benzine. The paints may contain lead, but there is less danger from the lead than from the spirit. It is the spirit which confers upon these paints their quickly drying properties, but at the same time it renders them extremely dangerous to the workmen alike from inhalation of the vapour and its inflammability. In investigating this question along with my colleagues of the Dangerous Trades Committee of the Home Office, our attention was specially drawn to the fact that as these paints are generally employed for coating spaces in ships that are confined and often dark, men have worked therein with naked lights, and, as a consequence, explosions and fires have occurred. Too often the workman is alone in the confined space, and as he may be rendered unconscious not only by the spirituous vapours rising from the paint, but, in the event of fire, by the products of combustion, he is quite unable to extricate himself from his perilous position. I have seen one man with burns nearly over the whole of his body who had been rescued with difficulty from the bunker in which he was working. It is not only in the confined spaces in the interior of ships that fires suddenly break out, they are not unknown during the painting of the outside of a ship in a dry dock. Momentarily and without any explanation, unless it be that the wind has fanned a naked light or blown a spark, the side of a ship may be enveloped in flame which is just as suddenly extinguished.

It is during the painting of the bunkers, fore and aft peaks, tunnels, ballast tanks, and the holds of ships that the greatest risk is incurred, and especially in the former, since only one man as a rule can work in these confined spaces at a time. Men have been known, after working in one of these confined spaces, to have become excited as if intoxicated, and on being removed to the open air they have vomited. The ejected contents of the stomach have smelt strongly of the spirit paint they were using. For a short period the men have seemed dazed and stupid, and would have fallen if unsupported.

Sometimes exposure of an hour or less to the vapours given off by the paint in a contracted chamber is sufficient to induce unpleasant symptoms. Men have become unconscious in the bunkers and have had to be extricated. On being placed on deck in the open air they have looked pale rather than cyanosed. In some instances where the symptoms have been less severe, there have been difficulty of breathing and a sense of suffocation in the chest, but as a rule these are absent. There is often complaint of a swimming in the head and a feeling of great uncertainty and want of self-confidence, while in other instances the individual falls soundly asleep. Now and again, when the men have been removed from the bunkers bleeding has occurred at the nose. As a rule the intoxicating and stupefying effects of these spirit paints soon pass off on exposing the workman to the open air.

In some of the men I observed a well-marked blue line on the gums, showing that in addition to the danger caused by inhaling spirituous vapours their system at the same time had been exposed to the risk of lead poisoning.

_Prevention._--Since these spirit compositions cannot be used to paint the inside of peaks, bunkers, and tunnels of ships, without running considerable risk to the workmen, clearly their employment ought to be prohibited in confined spaces. It is courting disaster to paint the inside of any cramped space, ingress to or egress from which can only take place through a man-hole. No naked lights should be allowed in these places. Illumination should be secured either by a safety lamp or by the electric light. All the workmen whom I have interrogated are unanimously of opinion that the work should be periodically interrupted. Every hour or two, according to the more or less confined character of the chamber in which the paints are being used, the workmen should go into the open air for several minutes. Six hours’ work a day should be the maximum, and this ought to be divided into equal halves, separated at least by one and a half hour’s interval. Since there is considerable risk from fire and explosion, no young or inexperienced person should be allowed to use these paints, and under all circumstances men on being employed for the first time should be informed of the dangers and of the risks they are running. Where a workman is painting the inside of a confined space in a ship with spirit paint he should be frequently visited by a foreman, to see that all is well.

When an individual has become intoxicated through the vapours given off by composite paints, the best treatment is to take him into the open air, and to wrap him up in rugs so as to avoid the chance of his being chilled. When the workman has sufficiently recovered, he should be accompanied home by some of his mates, put to bed, kept warm, and a saline aperient administered at the earliest opportunity.

THOMAS OLIVER.