Quo Vadis – or Déjà vu All Over Again, or are metalworking fluid compounders, managers, and end-users once again being thrown to the lions?

The Short Version

A decade ago, the U.S. EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) issued their Reregistration Eligibility Decision (RED) on the most commonly used formaldehyde-condensate microbicide – triazine. In the triazine RED, the EPA limited the maximum permissible active ingredient concentration in end-use diluted metalworking…

How to Remain Safe and Productive in Working with Metalworking Fluids During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Live webinar taking place July 29th, 2020 12pm CT

Three colleagues and I will be discussing COVID-19 risk mitigation in the workplace environment.  If you are interested, I recommend signing-up early.  Per the STLE blurb I’ve copied in its entirety below, participation is limited to the first 100 who sign up.

 Participants:

Dr. John Howell

Dr. Fred Passman

Bill…

Here’s a COVID-19 statistic – interpret it as you will…

A 23 June 2020 United Press International (UPI) headline in Health News (proclaims: “Less than half a population needs COVID-19 infection for herd immunity, study says.”

The report goes on to state: “The modeling study found that herd immunity potentially could be achieved with about 43 percent of the population being immune, as opposed to the 60 percent estimate derived from previous models.” This is based on modelling…

Does the SARS-CoV-2 virus persist in Water-Miscible Metalworking Fluids?

Over the past two months, I have received quite a number of emails and phone calls asking if water-miscible metalworking fluids (MWFs) were likely to be a source of SARS-CoV-2 virus exposure for machinists and others working in machine shops.

My short answer is that nobody really knows. I know that this answer is not particularly reassuring, but the test methods needed to test MWFs and MWF mists for SARS-CoV-2 in…

Why do I sometimes detect heavy microbial contamination but no evidence that it is causing problems to my fuel system?

Explanations that I’ve provided in the last three articles provide some of the answers to this question. In this post I’ll address another issue – microbial activity. The various microbiological test methods I’ve described in this blog series have provide information about either whether microbes are present or what sorts of microbes are present. General culture…