Q:My IBM Thinkcentre - Fumes cause medical symptoms

I would contact the lawyer who handles the McDonald's hot coffee spilled on lap ... and the Wendy's chile with cut-off finger cases. Come on now..... I have been working in electronics since I was 12 years old... I am now 56. I have been exposed at close range to electrolytics blowing up, burning plastic, x-rays from CRT's, high frequency high voltage arcing, lead solder fumes, etc, etc......... aside from male pattern baldness, severe cataracs, lung cancer, impotency, incontinentcy, erectile disfunction and diabetes... I am doing just fine. You might want to go to the newsgroup alt.frivilous.lawsuits Get a new computer from a different company or get a life. electricitym . .

Now that you brought up the idea! :-)

Seriously, I am not looking for money... I have a serious issue I'm trying to solve. If you search old postings, other people have had similar issues over the years.

I believe a more likely candidate than the PC would be the monitor. High voltage for the screen requires some large electrolytic capacacitors. Have you taken any steps to isolate the failing unit.... PC, monitor, scanner, external drives, etc?

Perhaps you have an allergy to a compound used in one of the many plastics, adhesives, inks, and other substances that go into making or packing the computer? Is anyone else bothered by it? Things like that can be tricky to track down but some people are just very sensitive to certain chemicals.

Many years ago, we had a customer bring an Emerson 27" television in because it had this "bleach" smell when it was left running.

We're thinking "Yeah, right!", but told the lady that owned the TV to go to bring it in and we'd take a look at. Initially, we couldn't smell anything when the TV first came in or when we first powered it on while she was there. She told us that it might take an hour before the smell started. So, she left it and we let it run.

Our first thoughts were she must have been cleaning with a bleach solution of some sort and spilled it down the back of the TV through the ventilation holes. Well, we left it on for just over an hour and it started to smell like bleach!

We took the back off the set to see if there was any kind of residue - nothing, the chassis looked clean. Upon further inspection, the flyback's iron-core lead had a hole the size of a quarter in the printed circuit board. It had either not been soldered properly or had broken at some point and was arcing madly from the lead to what was left of the chassis ground on the PCB. The burning of the PCB was giving off the bleach smell!

A little copper braid and a little board re-work took care of the problem. One of the weirdest things I'd ever seen... Glad I'm not servicing TV's any longer.

Randy

P.S. e-mail subject to change without notice thanks to so-called "Internet marketers" - AKA spammers

I had a Philips VCR that had a bad power supply, when i got it back from the repair shop and let it warm up, it would give out a bleach type smell, turned out to be excess solder flux (the orange stuff) around the joins - when the transformer in the PSU would warm up it would give off the stink. I left it plugged in and the smell 'burned' itself away in about a week.

Also, my LG CRT monitor gives off a less noticable smell, caused by the deflection yoke, if you leave the room and come back in a few minutes later you can smell the nice warm fuzzy monitor, Ahhhhh!

Thanks for the replies.

Well, it's not the monitor, as I've been using the same monitor for the past couple of years. Only one other person normally accesses the computer... with no symptoms. Then again, I'm much more sensitive to the ozone from laser printers, than many other people are.

I removed some "excess" internal peripherals, to see if increased PC airflow will help. EG Maybe a ribbon cable is touching against something hot and will no longer do so, with more room in the case... This is the first PC I've had that did this! I had a Thinkpad for work and it was totally fine...

Just to clarify.. I'm not saying that my sense of small was destroyed :-) (Just that there is no smell from the computer)

" I thought maybe some chemicals need to burn off.. but now I'm getting concerned. I don't smell anything. "

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 20:53:38 -0500, "Don Hickey" put finger to keyboard and composed:

IME, the highest voltage for electrolytic capacitors in a monitor or TV is around 200V. This is for the supply to the video amps. The HV and horizontal deflection circuits use film or ceramic caps.

- Franc Zabkar