What are some things Billy should watch for before going to the hospital?
I've honestly never heard of anything bad happening from being jabbed in the finger with it. I helped run fiber optic on about eight different jobs, and I terminated at four of those. I was always careful about touching the ends, but only for fear of ruining the cable. None of the other guys I was with wore masks or anything like that, we just avoided getting up close and snuffling the dust. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 05-02-2005 at 02:02 PM.
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This one time, at Maradon! camp:
I can only assume that the "fiber optic" scare is a lot like the asbestos scare - mostly hype. The dust generated by terminating fiber optic is actually fine enough to slip into your lung tissue and potentially cause lung cancer, but more often than not it's just caught in the mucous membranes and ejected just like every other bit of particulate.I've honestly never heard of anything bad happening from being jabbed in the finger with it. I helped run fiber optic on about eight different jobs, and I terminated at four of those. I was always careful about touching the ends, but only for fear of ruining the cable. None of the other guys I was with wore masks or anything like that, we just avoided getting up close and snuffling the dust.
Yeah, but the fibre is made of glass. If it enters your veins by poking through your skin and snaps off, you have sharp glass in your veins. This is what I'm concerned about.
At any rate, it's been a few hours, and it doesn't look like any blood vessels have ruptured in my finger. I'm probably fine, just making sure.
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x--RuvyenO-('-'Q) :
Yeah, but the fibre is made of glass. If it enters your veins by poking through your skin and snaps off, you have sharp glass in your veins. This is what I'm concerned about.At any rate, it's been a few hours, and it doesn't look like any blood vessels have ruptured in my finger. I'm probably fine, just making sure.
That would take a SERIOUS amount of effort and a little luck to actually accomplish.
For starters, it would be like trying to stab yourself with a drinking straw - it's possible to do, but 99.99% of the time it will just bend against your skin.
Second, the odds of it getting into a blood vessel with enough room for it to actually get into your bloodstream are also incredibly slim. Your skin just doesn't have huge blood vessels running through it, but rather capillaries so thin that blood cells have to travel single-file. Trying to fit even something as fine as fiber optic into a capillary would be like trying to punch a pepperoni through a sewing needle.
Sure, if you repeatedly jammed unterminated fiber optic into your inner elbow, maybe you'd have something to worry about, but if you're doing anything short of that you have nothing to worry about.
It sounds to me like your school is just trying to cover their own asses by telling you ghost stories about the dangers of fiber optic. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 05-02-2005 at 02:37 PM.
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Maradon! wrote, obviously thinking too hard:
That would take a SERIOUS amount of effort and a little luck to actually accomplish.For starters, it would be like trying to stab yourself with a drinking straw - it's possible to do, but 99.99% of the time it will just bend against your skin.
Second, the odds of it getting into a blood vessel with enough room for it to actually get into your bloodstream are also incredibly slim. Your skin just doesn't have huge blood vessels running through it, but rather capillaries so thin that blood cells have to travel single-file. Trying to fit even something as fine as fiber optic into a capillary would be like trying to punch a pepperoni through a sewing needle.
Sure, if you repeatedly jammed unterminated fiber optic into your inner elbow, maybe you'll have something to worry about, but if you're doing anything short of that you have nothing to worry about.
It sounds to me like your school is just trying to cover their own asses by telling you ghost stories about the dangers of fiber optic.
So I'm not going to die? Sweet! Thanks, Maradon! 
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Ruvyen who doth quote:
So I'm not going to die? Sweet! Thanks, Maradon!
Just don't take this as an excuse to go jabbing yourself in the eyball with fiber optic 
You do need to be careful with it to minimize risk, but the risk isn't nearly as great as they'd have you believe.
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Ninoking:
All hype? No, if it does actually make it into the bloodstream it will block bloodflow to the heart. Thats about it.
That would have to be a pretty signifigant wad of fiberglass...
