Dont want to burst everyones bubble here but I have a health question

[SFBayArea]

Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

I've been doing CRH for years but my own health hasn't been great of late. Mysterious symptoms force me to run up health bills. I've getting mysterious small amounts of blood in my mucous from the rear of my nose for the last few months. When I woke up today, I got a small nosebleed too. I thought it was me but I asked my mother who also lives here about it and she said that she's gotten small nosebleeds recently too. I also get strange occasional pain in my neck and collar bone veins. When I go through the coins, I do it on a specific table in the house. The table has gotten really dirty over the year from all the coins. I can see small specs of nickel and copper from the coins left on it. I finally wiped off the table today since I usually don't. I only use the table primarily for this. Our house is not very large. I didn't use gloves for a while when I first did CRH but now I do. I've done CRH more over the past year than previous years. I recently read that nickel dust could cause a lot of health problems including possible cancer as well. I'm wondering now if anyone here has had any similar experiences or if not. What precautions do you do in sorting out your coins? Hate to talk about such a down subject admist everyone's nice finds but I think the subject does deserve some merit in terms of long time exposure to nickel.

 

[Coins4Cheese]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

I have been searching pennies and nickels for a couple years now, and I don't have any symptoms. When I search, I usually put a paper towel on the table, that way it doesn't go onto the table and possibly into my food or respiratory system. I don't wear gloves, but I do wash my hands theroughly after searching (Black grime forms onto my fingers after extended periods of searching). After I'm done searching, I'm very careful not to eat or touch my face for at least an hour. When you search, you should at least have a towel on the table, or wipe the table off after you're done. It may be that those symptoms are indeed caused by the coins you search. The airflow in your house can pick those particles up, and than you breath it in. It may be a good idea to turn off your heater/AC, and/or close all windows and doors to cut off air circulation while searching.

 

[SFBayArea]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

Yeah.. I'm going to clean up after I do this now. I used to not use gloves but my hands got too dirty. I do recommend using gloves. You can also re-use the pair after if you don't want to waste them. I just wash the pair after I do CRH and wipe them to dry off. I use them again until they break. I use a sharp pry tool to open the rolls in a circular fashion so I don't have to use my finger nails. Anyhow I hope that everyone here gets better after I cleaned the table. I did really get scared about I read about nickel poisoning online. I never thought about it before. I figured the government would not create something so readily handled by people that it couldn't be safe. But then again people or government will do anything to make or save money and worry about consequences later. They should've chose steel to replace silver instead of nickel. Why did they choose nickel anyways? Isn't steel cheaper? They didn't want a coin to rust away?

 

[JJtheRollHunter]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

I believe zinc is toxic in large quantities, so if you search tons of cents, I guess that could happen.

 

[SFBayArea]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

I search mostly halves and some pennies (only about 2 boxes of pennies a month) so it's most likely nickel that is large quantities. I didn't read about zinc but I wondered about the nickel so I read about it online. It's scary the more I read. I cleaned the table off. Don't know if it'll make a difference. I submitted some blood tests this week and will get the results next week. Cross my fingers that it's nothing too out of the ordinary. Well if anything, I'm hoping to raise awareness to glove up and use protection before CRH. Cleaning up afterwards is good too. I didn't know about all this when I first started. The table where I did CRH started to look like a metal shop table and it's in the livingroom.

 

[JJtheRollHunter]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

I search mostly halves and some pennies (only about 2 boxes of pennies a month) so it's most likely nickel that is large quantities. I didn't read about zinc but I wondered about the nickel so I read about it online. It's scary the more I read. I cleaned the table off. Don't know if it'll make a difference. I submitted some blood tests this week and will get the results next week. Cross my fingers that it's nothing too out of the ordinary. Well if anything, I'm hoping to raise awareness to glove up and use protection before CRH. Cleaning up afterwards is good too. I didn't know about all this when I first started. The table where I did CRH started to look like a metal shop table and it's in the livingroom.

Well, I hope you get better, and my prayers are with you.

 

[SFBayArea]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

Thanks for everyone looking out.. hopefully the tests will be ok next week.

 

[Rakattack]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

Poisoning

In 1983, the United States Mint began minting pennies coated in copper but made primarily of zinc. With the new zinc pennies, there is the potential for zinc toxicosis, which can be fatal. One reported case of chronic ingestion of 425 pennies (over 1 kg of zinc) resulted in death due to gastrointestinal bacterial and fungal sepsis, while another patient, who ingested 12 grams of zinc, only showed lethargy and ataxia (gross lack of coordination of muscle movements).[6] Several other cases are reported of humans suffering zinc intoxication by the ingestion of zinc coins.[7][8]

Pennies and other small coins are sometimes ingested by dogs, resulting in the need for medical treatment to remove the foreign body. The zinc content of some coins can also cause zinc toxicity, which is commonly fatal in dogs, where it causes a severe hemolytic anemia, also liver or kidney damage; vomiting and diarrhoea are possible symptoms.[9][10][11] Zinc is highly toxic in parrots and poisoning can often be fatal.[12]

Just pulled that from Wiki. Looks like you shouldn't have any problems with pennies unless you had a thick layer of zinc on your table. I personally use a thick cardboard sheet. It's almost time to get rid of it though. A black layer is starting to form over it after a couple months of penny sorting. I suggest getting a disposable surface to do your CRH-ing and gloves.

 

[ivan salis]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

money is filthy by its nature , think of the thousands of hands it been thru the sneezing , coughing and spitting and such -- theres lots of germs carried by folks without even going into the whole metals thing -- one should without a doubt wash ones hands after handling a good sum of coins or cash --when handling really old coins (say romans--got in a sale) be very careful --the money could have been buried during a plague out break back then -- one only needs 1 germ to survive to ruin yer day.

 

[Coins4Cheese]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

Here's a very intersting fact. 90% of bills in the US and Canada have cocaine on them.

Nearly nine out of ten bills circulating in the U.S. and its northern neighbor are tainted with cocaine, according to what's being called the most definitive research to date on the subject.

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What's more, researchers were surprised to find hints that more Americans are using the illegal drug, said study leader Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth.

In a similar study by the same team in 2007, 67 percent of U.S. bills were found to be tainted with cocaine. The new study puts the percentage at 85 to 95—a jump of roughly 20 percent, Zuo said.

The drug gets on paper money during drug transactions and when people roll bills to snort cocaine powder, Zuo said.

Stress spurred by the worldwide financial crisis may be driving people to abuse cocaine, one of the most common illegal drugs in the world, Zuo said in a phone interview.

The new findings could "help raise public awareness about cocaine use and lead to greater emphasis on curbing its abuse," Zuo said in a follow-up email.

Cocaine Country

Part of the reason the new study is so complete, Zuo said, is because the team used new equipment, a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer, which doesn't ruin the money—allowing the scientists to test more bills without breaking the bank.

The team collected banknotes from the Brazil, Canada, the U.S., China, and Japan.

With 5.8 million people having used the drug at least once in 2007, the U.S. is the world's biggest cocaine market, according to the 2009 UN World Drug Report.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the U.S.—along with Canada—had the highest percentage of cocaine-permeated bills in the study.

Of the 234 U.S. bills collected in 17 large and small cities, nearly 90 percent had traces of cocaine, especially in larger cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit. Ninety-five percent of the dollars found in Washington, D.C., had cocaine embedded in their fibers—among the highest in the study.

(See pictures of cocaine-cultivating country in National Geographic magazine.)

In keeping with their reputations for having relatively low rates of cocaine use, China and Japan yielded bills with relatively low levels of cocaine contamination.

Asian drug-taking practices could conceivably be partly responsible for the lower percentages of cocaine-tainted bills. Zuo doesn't know, for example, whether Asian cocaine users inhale through rolled bills as many Western users do.

"It is for sure that drug abuse in different countries and regions has different use patterns which may affect cocaine contamination on money," he said via email.

Regardless of where you live, though, there's little chance of getting buzzed off your bills, Zuo said. Even in the U.S. and Canada, the concentrations are simply too small.

 

[phrostie]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

So I guess you're saying instead of eating my non-copper pennies I should instead dump them at a bank. Cool!

On a more serious note I hope you get better soon.

 

[garbageman]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

I hope you get better soon. I spray my table down with a disinfectant cleaner and wipe it every time I finish going through coins. They are very dirty and who knows where they have been. Good luck. -Garbageman

 

[golden silver]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

It could be the incredibly toxic hot air that comes out of the california political environment? No, but on a serious note I am not sure what could be causing it. Sometimes I get nose bleeds when the air is extremely dry. Could it be that?

Golden Silver

 

[GMan00001]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

I use a rubbermaid (or tupperware or whatever brand it is) container that is about the size of a shoebox and was probably intended to be used as such.

Unless I am on a road trip, I sit in a nice comfy recliner in a well-lit room and hold the lid of this rubbermaid container in one hand and have the other edge of the lid leaning against my chest/stomach. Then put a handful of coins on the lid (which has a nicely rounded lip on it such that the coins don't easily fall off of the lid and it's easy to flip them over) and sort through that handful, dumping the rejects into the rubbermaid container. The container also happens to be perfectly sized to fit about $50 in pennies, $200 in nickels, and just about $1000 in dimes, quarters, or halves and is just small enough to allow easy transfers to the larger canvas bags. I have a portable stand that I use to place the keepers on (one of those cat stands that with a soft carpeted surface on top). It is also easy to carry that from my sorting chair to the computer so I can easily enter my results into the computer.

Every so often, I wash off the lid as it becomes grimy. It cleans up pretty well with just a little soap and water.

 

[obediah]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

I punched this guy once and his nose bleed(?).

 

[GMan00001]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

As I was thinking about this some more, wouldn't anyone who works at a bank that has a counting machine be subject to more problems from coin particulates than CRHers?

Banks have counting machines flinging the coins around at high speed before crashing into one another. If anything, I would think the counting machines would be far more likely to cause the particles of the coins to fly into the air than the little bit of light touching that we do as CRH'ers at home. Or perhaps another example would be at casinos that still use coins and they come out of the machine and bang against each other out in the open.

I have been CRHing for 25 years (granted not always at heavy volume), but the only health issue I have noticed is during especially certain times of the year (read Minnesota winter) my fingertips tend to get extremely dry and crack open if I don't use lotion frequently enough, but only some of that is related to CRHing.

 

[dp2013]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

" No, but on a serious note I am not sure what could be causing it. Sometimes I get nose bleeds when the air is extremely dry. Could it be that?"

I was thinking the same thing. We run a humidifier when the air is dry (Winter time and the heat pump always running) and the sinuses love us for it.

 

[jrf30]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

I live in Phoenix. This is not a new issue here. When people come to visit, if they stay for a week or more, Many times after a few days they get nosebleeds. It is from dry air here. And when people come here to live, they also get nosebleeds for a while, untitl ehy get used to it.

As for blood in the mucus, I have that often. It too can come from dry air. If I run a humidifier at night I get it less. But it also comes from many other sources, most of them NOT to be concerned over.

hasa it been dry in SF lately? If so, then that could very well be it. Almost all people (Which is why it would affect your mother too) will get a little blood in the mucus if it becomes drier than what their throats and noses are used to. Just happens.

Unless you see blood in your other bodily discharges (yes, I'm talkig about urine and feces! LOL) then I don't think you need to worry much about it. Especially not in your nose though.

Let me know about the air lately there. How dry has it been. Winter is always drier than summer, so I am hoping that is a probable casue for the blood in the mucus. :-)

 

[low xtreme]

Re: Don't want to burst everyone's bubble here but I have a health question

As I was thinking about this some more, wouldn't anyone who works at a bank that has a counting machine be subject to more problems from coin particulates than CRHers?

Banks have counting machines flinging the coins around at high speed before crashing into one another. If anything, I would think the counting machines would be far more likely to cause the particles of the coins to fly into the air than the little bit of light touching that we do as CRH'ers at home. Or perhaps another example would be at casinos that still use coins and they come out of the machine and bang against each other out in the open.

I have been CRHing for 25 years (granted not always at heavy volume), but the only health issue I have noticed is during especially certain times of the year (read Minnesota winter) my fingertips tend to get extremely dry and crack open if I don't use lotion frequently enough, but only some of that is related to CRHing.

as part of my job, i usually roll about 600-700 dollars worth of coins a day(with a machine) and hand count over $100K in bills. i've never had any health problems because of it though. i always wash my hands thoroughly after i'm done and keep fingers away from my face as best as i can.