Hi,
Sorry to trouble your forum but I'm in very bad need of someone who can help with a problem and I don't know who to ask.
My wife is currently 30 weeks pregnant. In the corner of Kitchen the other day we found a open jam jar with white spirit in it about %40 full and paint brushes. I stupidly left it in the kitchen when decorating months and months ago not really thinking about any health hazards.
My wife looked into it on the internet and it comes back with how bad white spirit can be for pregnant women and now we are both in quite a panic. Unfortunately all tests I can find are done with stong vapour concentrations and there is nothing that says about very low exposure to white spirit.
You can only smell the white spirit when right next to the jar and from my searching on the net when you first smell it, the concentration in the air is around 0.5-5 mg/m3
From the tests I can find on the internet which were conducted on pregnant rats,the values used were around 5700 mg/m3 6 hours a day for 3-20 days and that showed birth defects.
When the values were around 600 - 1800mg/m3 6 hours a day for 6-15 days there were no detectable birth defects.
As we have not smelt it round the house, it that a sure way of knowing the levels have been low (below 0.5 -5mg/m3) and of no risk?
People advise pregnant women not to use white spirit which I guess is because they will be subjecting themselves to high levels of vapor while in use.
What I would like help with is an undisturbed open jar not giving off much smell in the corner of a room a problem or are we worrying about nothing.
Any help / advice you could offer would be very greatly appreciated.