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Think before you bathe

Annie_N
Community Champion (Retired)
Community Champion (Retired)

Many of us will already have worked this one out, but it's as well not to use your phone in the bath while it's connected to the charger. Actually, it's probably not the best idea to use it in the bath, even when it isn't connected to the charger, as it may not prove to be as waterproof as you hope.

 

From The Guardian

15 REPLIES 15

Annie_N
Community Champion (Retired)
Community Champion (Retired)

There is another risk to phones - it won't prove fatal, but it can do a lot of damage. That is the presence of DEET in some of the more powerful insect repellants, especially those intended for use in malarial areas.

 

As a birdwatcher, I have been aware for many years of the damage that DEET can inflict, particularly on plastics, varnishes and the optical coatings on lenses. You end up with the stuff on the palms of your hands as you apply it to your exposed skin, and unless you then wash your hands very thoroughly (thus removing the repellant from your hands) you end up applying it to anything else you touch. Over the years, I have wrecked 2 wristwatches, 2 pairs of spectacles, and the rubber armouring on a pair of binoculars. Friends using spray repellants have also removed the chromatic coatings from binocular and telescope lenses.

 

Logically, phones must be at risk of exactly the same damage, and it will become more prevalent as mobile coverage is extended in tropical areas. As I've been typing this, I wondered why none of my phones had fallen victim to DEET, and the answer is simple - the phone signal hasn't been there, so my phone has remained in my pocket, in the bottom of my rucksack, or even in the bottom of my suitcase. But this signal-free situation is changing rapidly in many parts of the world, so remember that mobile phones and insect repellants may not mix well.

63johnw
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

@Annie_N wrote:

There is another risk to phones - it won't prove fatal, but it can do a lot of damage. That is the presence of DEET in some of the more powerful insect repellants, especially those intended for use in malarial areas.

 

As a birdwatcher, I have been aware for many years of the damage that DEET can inflict, particularly on plastics, varnishes and the optical coatings on lenses. You end up with the stuff on the palms of your hands as you apply it to your exposed skin, and unless you then wash your hands very thoroughly (thus removing the repellant from your hands) you end up applying it to anything else you touch. Over the years, I have wrecked 2 wristwatches, 2 pairs of spectacles, and the rubber armouring on a pair of binoculars. Friends using spray repellants have also removed the chromatic coatings from binocular and telescope lenses.

 

Logically, phones must be at risk of exactly the same damage, and it will become more prevalent as mobile coverage is extended in tropical areas. As I've been typing this, I wondered why none of my phones had fallen victim to DEET, and the answer is simple - the phone signal hasn't been there, so my phone has remained in my pocket, in the bottom of my rucksack, or even in the bottom of my suitcase. But this signal-free situation is changing rapidly in many parts of the world, so remember that mobile phones and insect repellants may not mix well.


Thanks for this @Annie_N didnt know that, as one who is eaten alive by creepy crawlies when abroad I have purchased some repelant with DEET in for my Carribean trip later this year so will be extra careful when handling things !

Annie_N
Community Champion (Retired)
Community Champion (Retired)

Phonotas - yes, I vaguely remember them. Rightly or wrongly, I associate them with the chap who went round the first office building I worked in, cleaning the typewriters. The keys used to get choked with ink from the ribbons (if you remember typewriters of that sort!), and they were cleaned with meths as the solvent - and you could tell when the chap was in the building, as the smell of the meths drifted down any corridor which he had walked down. Heaven knows what a working life of occupational exposure to meths can have done to him, but we office juniors just worried how his wife coped with the smell when he got home.

 

@63johnw It occurs to me that I ought to write a new thread about the perils of DEET for phones - it's not the sort of damage you'd want on a top-of-range phone, so perhaps it needs a bit more emphasis.

jeffkinn
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion
Phonotas was just office desk phones. A spray and a cloth. Amazing how to think of such a service. I don't recall typewriter cleaners in the same way.

Jeffkinn_Sig.png

Annie_N
Community Champion (Retired)
Community Champion (Retired)

@jeffkinn wrote:
I don't recall typewriter cleaners in the same way.

Well, I think you're a few years younger than me :smileywink:

hrym
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

My father sold wholesale stationery and print.  I used to have a box of type cleaner sticks from his unsold stock that held a solvent you squeezed onto a felt pad on the end.   I also had things a bit like a soft eraser that you pressed onto the type to get bits out of the closed letters.  Film ribbons did away with all that.   Slightly OT, I once put a fabric ribbon in a dot-matrix computer printer that normally used film ones.  Totally gummed up the pins, though WD40 solved that.   Abandoned fabric ribbon!