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I'm trying to progress to page 5 of this thread and I'm sure I've been reading a LOAD of double posts! Maybe it's the fumes of of this old DELL I'm having to use at the moment... nay.

Anyway, if it were ozone, you'd probably be coughing quite a bit. And for the record, I absolutely adore the new smell my previous MBP's/MB's and iMac's have emitted. I had quite a few as well due to returns at the time. I miss that odour. Maybe buy a new keyboard to capture it once more
 
This post made me laugh so hard. Thanks I needed it.

Posted on a fumey iPhone 3G, must be my burned out 3g chipset. Still works like a champ.

I don't see the Mac Pros emitting toxic fumes as likely, but I am glad that Apple is looking into the possibility. Better safe than sorry.

I only quoted your post to say I'm from Puyallup, too! W00t! Weird... to encounter someone on one of the many interwebs from my same medium sized hometown.
 
New electronics can emit some fumes in the beginning due to heating of some of the components.

Many plastics contain traces of benzene and it can be that these traces are cooking off. Anyway, the concentration is probably so low that it would be more dangerous to open your car window on the highway. Exhaust fumes from cars still contain a lot of benzene.

I know how they measure these fumes coming of electronics or other stuff and it's usually done with a gas chromatographer. These things are so sensitive that they would probably detect benzene in the breath of a fresh born baby.

This is most likely a lot of fuss about nothing. There is definitely not enough benzene in the mac pro to cause cancer.. Unless you are sitting in a broomcloset with 20 new ones firing up for the first time...

I bet they would detect the same fumes coming from Dell's, Toshiba's, HP's etc..
 
Smell

Only the French can smell it, mainly due to the fact that it's probably cigarette smoke going in the front end, reacting with something exotic inside, and being emitted as benzene out the back!
 
i smell it on my mac pro 8-core (early 2008).

The fact is that in order to smell the solvents such as benzene, they must be volatile so you simply will not still be able to smell such solvents on a computer that old. Prior to being discovered to be carcinogenic, benzene was used to wash down desks because it evaporated so quickly.
 
Exhaust fumes from cars still contain a lot of benzene.

Not true. Not only is benzene added to petrol in very small quantities, but any car with a catalytic converter (either the newer three stage or older two stage) is designed to convert unburnt hydrocarbons into carbon dioxide and water.
 
Umm, how much benzene? Thing is that all sorts of things emit benzene. It's not like they just thought, "hey, let's add some benzene!" Benzene formation or inclusion would be far less surprising than some of the more bizarre organic compounds you might not expect to find and worry about. Question isn't if, it's how much and why. Sources of benzene are all around us. If you can't quantify and compare to relevant standards, then you are a hack, not a scientist.

This said, I did purchase a pair of shoes once that had a horrible off gassing smell. Who knows what they put into the "rubber" in these. Actual rubber production is sometimes more alchemy than science. That's what you get when products are made in countries with low environmental standards and low ethic to profit ratios. Wasn't there just that milk thing????

It's rich to call someone a hack when you can't even produce a diagram of benzene. Your diagram suggests that there are two triple bonds, two double bonds and two radicals (which are highly unstable and would instantly form a 3rd double bond if this were the case). This is not only impossible, but if by some bastardisation of chemistry was produced, would be far too strained to exist for any measurable time period. Add to that your laughable view that the formation of benzene would be unsurprising within a mac pro and i'm starting to question how you are able to distinguish between hacks and scientists.

BTW. Vulcanisation (not rubber production as rubber in it's natural form is an unusable tar-like substance) is very well known science as it has existed since the 19th Century.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

I haven't heard about this. I wonder what percentage of mac pros it actually affects if any.
 
Much Ado About Nothing

I'm inhaling formaldehyde, cyanide, benzene and sucking on a fiberglass filter, and I feel great.

Pass the baby milk.
 
Not true. Not only is benzene added to petrol in very small quantities, but any car with a catalytic converter (either the newer three stage or older two stage) is designed to convert unburnt hydrocarbons into carbon dioxide and water.

I know, but there are still many cars around without catalytic converters.. The chance of encountering benzene molecules is higher when sticking your head out of your car, than sticking it in a Mac Pro.
 
This said, I did purchase a pair of shoes once that had a horrible off gassing smell. Who knows what they put into the "rubber" in these.

It's survival of the fittest. People who wear Crocks have a lower life-expectancy than people wearing leather shoes. In addition, people with leather shoes are less bound to have belly-button piercings, PC computers and tattoos.. :D
 
Smelly experiences...

We got in 6 HP workstations for a client (higher end desktops) and 2 of them smelled to high heaven.

The smell was almost like burning hair.

We did our thing to the systems and delivered them. They are in a very well ventilated shop and you can't detect any odor.

Yes, some smell is normal but those that did smell really smelled, bad. The kind of smell that stuck in your clothes and hair. YECCHHH!

One point is that American import laws are a lot less stringent than those of most foreign companies. For an example, you can import plywood and particle board into this country that you can't legally use in public housing in New York due to the amount of off gassed toxic fumes. Canada exports to the US stuff that they can't import because of the toxic smells.

And NOTHING smells as bad as a new Tempurpedic mattress... My god but that thing STUNK! I would get sore a sore throat and headache from that damn thing. I had to turn the heat up and keep the windows opened! It took nearly four months to get rid of it yet the company said that's 'normal' and 'tough it out'. Their 'guarantee' is worthless. There was no return possibility. I learned about the import laws after researching the smells from that mattress. 'Give us your tired huddled masses and all the toxic off gassing products you can make. Think Katrina trailers and the toxic plywood...

But anyway, we have had power supplies burn out here from time to time and yikes =:-O the smells are incredibly bad...
 
I am french and seeing that the article is from "liberation" paper.. i would not pay ANY attention to it.
Their typical editorial line is very weak, lots of FUD on many topics, and definitely have ZERO expertise on IT subjects.
There are never in-depth articles.... should this come from "le Monde", or "Le figaro" this would be another story.
This paper is known for catchy titles and provovative articles, but never go in-depth..ever..

There were busted last year for claiming about knowing about the french president sending love text messages to his ex wife and stuff.
They were debunked and had to withdraw. This shows how "Serious" this newspaper is.

It has as much credibility as Sarah Palin talking about the Macbook Pro refresh..

Hem.. the "false" (?) news you're talking about was published by the "Nouvel Observateur" not by Liberation, so please keep your unappropriate comments for yourself.

Moreover, the MacPro problems was first published by the very well known and honorable Macbidouille website (www.macbidouille.com) one year ago :
http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2007-08-20/#14816

Then again recently :
http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2008-09-26/#17122
http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2008-09-28/

You could read many comments in the forum telling that the described case is not the only one. I guess there are only a few, but thanks to them, the problem is now under investigation by Apple. Thermal paste is suspected.
 
Hem.. the "false" (?) news you're talking about was published by the "Nouvel Observateur" not by Liberation, so please keep your unappropriate comments for yourself.

Moreover, the MacPro problems was first published by the very well known and honorable Macbidouille website (www.macbidouille.com) one year ago :
http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2007-08-20/#14816

Then again recently :
http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2008-09-26/#17122
http://www.macbidouille.com/news/2008-09-28/

You could read many comments in the forum telling that the described case is not the only one. I guess there are only a few, but thanks to them, the problem is now under investigation by Apple. Thermal paste is suspected.

Thank you. It was needed.
 
I wonder, is there any likelihood that the smell would be picked up in transit?
Trace the effected lots to a single shipment of Mac Pro's and some other offending package.

...Thermal paste is suspected.

Oh, never mind.

It has as much credibility as Sarah Palin talking about the Macbook Pro refresh..

This is my favourite quote of the day. Thank you Patriick! :D
 


Earlier this week, a report posted to a French newspaper claimed that and odor being emitted by some Mac Pros could actually be toxic fumes. An Apple spokesperson spoke to Macworld and stated that they have not found any evidence to prove this claim, but states they will continue to investigate it.

A strange startup odor has been noted by some Mac Pro owners on Apple's discussion forums.

Article Link


Crazy stuff. I'm sure you breathe in a lot more benzene fumes filling up your car at a gas station one time than you would from a lifetime of exposure from a Mac Pro starting up. In fact, the formaldehyde vapors from your carpet will kill you before your Mac Pro will. Let's keep things in perspective, people. :rolleyes:
 
does this mean a recall may be in the works? if so, that would be sweet if the upcoming mac pros are non-toxic and everyone with previous models get to swap machines. just a thought. i used to work at the apple store and a genius said that the aluminum that the mac pros are made of came from an haunted ancient indian burial ground. it is making more sense now.
 
My MacPro 1.1 had a real potent new electronics smell for the first couple weeks. Whole apartment smelled. I loved it though, smell should be bottled and sold. Hope it's just toxic enough to get us all new systems but no real heath effects. Cancer does not sound too good, doubt it's that bad though.
 
Toxic fumes in the morning

What if I emit toxic fumes when I start up in the morning?
 
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