Solvent crazing
A network of fine cracks that appears in plastic days after a solvent touched it. The surface looked fine at the time, which is what makes it dangerous.
In detail
A solvent applied to a polymer under mechanical stress can produce environmental stress cracking, seen as a network of very fine cracks spreading across the surface. Two features make it a distinctive hazard in cleaning. It needs stress as well as chemistry, so the crazing appears at moulded corners, around screw bosses and at snap-fits — the places a plastic part is already strained — rather than uniformly where the solvent was applied. And it is delayed: the surface can look unaffected when it is wiped and craze over the following hours or days, by which time nobody connects the two. Domestic solvents are entirely capable of it. A regulator's fact sheets record that acetone attacks plastics and that white spirit attacks plastic, rubber and coatings, and alcohol-based cleaners craze several common transparent plastics. That is why device and lighting manufacturers specify what may touch their housings rather than leaving it open, and why nail varnish remover on a laminate worktop, a spectacle lens or an acrylic bath is one of the most reliably destructive things in a household cupboard. The damage is structural and cannot be polished out.
Why
- Acetone is explained by Solvent crazing
- Household plastics is explained by Solvent crazing
- Laminate worktop is explained by Solvent crazing
- Phenolic plastic is explained by Solvent crazing
The stable plastic. Its realistic failure is somebody trying to restore the shine with a solvent.
Sources for this page
Sources
Right to Know Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet: Acetone (RTK 0006)
New Jersey Department of Health, 2015 · Government or regulator
Relied on for: That acetone is a solvent for plastics and that it attacks plastics. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The 'Description and Use' paragraph and the 'Handling and Storage' reactivity list. Supports the claim as stated. Establishes acetone as a catalogue agent on a regulator's identity and reactivity rather than on general chemistry, and supplies the plastics warning that governs every domestic use of nail polish remover on a surface.
Right to Know Hazardous Substance Fact Sheet: Stoddard Solvent (RTK 1736)
New Jersey Department of Health, 2008 · Government or regulator
Relied on for: That Stoddard solvent attacks plastic, rubber and coatings. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The 'Description and Use' paragraph and the 'Handling and Storage' reactivity list. Supports the claim as stated. Gives the solvent branch of the stain records a named agent with a regulator behind it, and resolves the British/American naming collision that had kept 'white spirit' out of the catalogue.
Cleaning instructions for luminaires
ETAP Lighting International · Manufacturer documentation
Relied on for: That on plastic parts only antistatic detergents without alcohol should be used and that detergents containing volatile organic compounds are excluded on LED luminaires. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — Section 0, the introduction, covering the safety instructions and the general instructions; and section 1, the cleaning table for parts that affect lighting, by component material. Supports the claim as stated. Opens the light-fitting domain, which had three externally observed rows and no source. Covers how-to-clean-a-light-fitting and, with the consumer safety body read alongside it, power-off-before-cleaning-a-light-fitting. It does NOT close waiting-for-a-bulb-to-cool: it states the condition and declines the duration, so the thirty-minute figure that recurs in consumer results still has no authority behind it and is not adopted.
Last reviewed by a person on .