Melted plastics

[Substantial]

Hello everyone, I have a weird situation that I need clarification on. My wife and I keep our bearded dragon enclosure in our tarantula room. Yesterday my wife was doing maintenance in the dragons enclosure and accidently set his heating lamp over a plastic part of his enclosure and left for work. When I came home to check on the animals my whole tarantula room smelled like plastic. upon investigation I found the heat lamp had heated up the plastic and started warping and melting down. The plastic didn't actually burn, so there was no smoke. Just melted plastic smell. I aired the room out as best as possible. I have tried using the ladder system to find similar situations, questions, and answers but no luck. Has anyone had a situation like this before where plastics got melted in the house or near your tarantulas and where they ok, what was the outcome for your tarantulas.

 

[viper69]

I have once. Get your Ts out of that death room.

Lucky your home blding didn’t burn down jeez

 

[arthurliuyz]

@HooahArmy

 

[HooahArmy]

Out from the Ouija board summons... it's HooahArmy!

Alright, ladies and gents! Melting plastic is something I have to deal with often on the job. I get a number of questions about it too. Plastic tends to be stable at room temperate and not release any toxins, yet the melting or burning of it can indeed emit something fierce. Since the plastic is no longer melting, anything that will be released has already been released, meaning that the toxins have already entered the air in the area.
To ensure safety, we'll engage in some after-occurrence precautions:
1. Do you see a grime, oil, detritus, etc. anywhere near the melt zone or your pals enclosures? Check all surfaces to see if anything airborne left residues. You can spot clean where you see stuff, or just to be safe, wipe everything down to ward against what you can't see.
2. Keep ventilating! Good work turning on the air, opening a window, or breaking out the fan! If you haven't already, move your pals from the room and move the melted stinky item away from the area. If you can't move things, air stuff out the best you can. While plastics and other polymers release the most funk during the time of burning, the smell can bother critters with olfactory sensors (noses) or potentially even annoy some inverts. Because we don't want to risk anything, let's try to keep the good air flow around until the melt smell goes away, or until it's been at least a week or two.
3. Keep an eye on your buddies! Are the Ts acting strangely? Is the bearded dragon wrinkling his nose or becoming stressed or lethargic? Animals can often let you know that something is up through changes in their behaviors. If you see something odd, move your pal to a different location and keep monitoring. Usually, a change of place and some quiet time can help with stress of a sudden environmental change, like a plastic smell or melt emissions.
4. Scope out your items. You may want to replace the melted item. Check out other items within the vicinity of the heat lamp to ensure they haven't been damaged, and check the hear lamp too for anything melted and stuck to it. If you have plastic clingers on your lamp, they may keep heating and melting to continuously emit the funky smell.

Please feel free to ask more or comment!
Now back to the demon realm (aka work)!

 

[Substantial]

@HooahArmy
-Hello Thankyou so much for the Kind, educated reply, it is quite comforting and also the beauty of this forum board at work.
I would like to also say I will be following your guidance as best as possible! Here is some information on measures I have taken. please feel free to comment back.
-I have not found any grime, or residues yet on the dragons enclosure ( luckily). The melt location (on top of dragons enclosure) was about 7' away from the tarantula collection, didn't find any residues on tarantula enclosures either. I plan on cleaning out every enclosure and replacing substrate starting tonight.
- I do run my purifier in there all the time. ( 24/7,365 days a year) It was on during the incident and hopefully that helped.
- I've been on constant monitor mode with everyone about every hour.
- unfortunately I can't move the collection, we live in 600sqft apartment with 2 troublemaker Cats(lol) and were spilling out.
- I've since removed the air filter from the purifier and replaced with new filter
- Window has been open, Fan , and air purifier have been on constant since the incident.
- The smell is almost gone, faint smell remains. I do notice the smell is getting harder to trace.
- Every one has taken food like regular since the incident.
Question for you:
1. Should I replace substrate? or would you just spot clean. ( I'm apprehensive too just start pulling out reptiles and tarantulas out and compound more stress on them).
2. Is it typical in your experience that the animal would get immediately get sick from plastic fume exposure or is there a delay in symptoms?
3. If all the animals are ok and I haven't experienced problems or symptoms with the animals from this incident... Say 3 months from now. Would the likelihood of one of the animals dying as a result from this incident go down with time or will it remain the same?\
4. Is the room forever contaminated? Like if I were to bring in new specimens could they die from being in that room going forward?
Thankyou a ton for your reply, you have made us feel much more better with this information.
Please feel free to add anything.
or if you have any more questions please feel free!!!!

 

[Substantial]

@HooahArmy

Thankyou so much for passing this on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[HooahArmy]

1. Should I replace substrate? or would you just spot clean. ( I'm apprehensive too just start pulling out reptiles and tarantulas out and compound more stress on them).
2. Is it typical in your experience that the animal would get immediately get sick from plastic fume exposure or is there a delay in symptoms?
3. If all the animals are ok and I haven't experienced problems or symptoms with the animals from this incident... Say 3 months from now. Would the likelihood of one of the animals dying as a result from this incident go down with time or will it remain the same?\
4. Is the room forever contaminated? Like if I were to bring in new specimens could they die from being in that room going forward?
Thankyou a ton for your reply, you have made us feel much more better with this information.

Nice work so far! Your pals sound like they're getting on fine and will be alright in time! As for your questions...
1. If your buddies seem alright and aren't reacting, your substrate should be fine. Smells from melting items are usually airborne and dissipate; they're not likely to embed in substrate. You can spot clean by just doing occasional wipe-downs of anything that could be unseen on surfaces, and by doing a water change and water bowl cleaning. As of now, they're shouldn't be a reason for you to change substrate.
2/3. My tox background makes me analyze a number of people who have come in contact with burning or melting chemicals or compounds. Most often, the effects are very immediate as inhaled toxins irritate the lungs, causing coughing, snotting, puking, and all the other fun. In serious cases, enough toxins are inhaled that they reach the bloodstream through the lungs, but this mostly will happen with burning and less so with melting, and more often with very noxious items. The worst that plastic can do when melted is smell like heck. Burning it is a whole different animal, so we're all glad nothing scorched. Delayed effects can happen, but usually with inhaling smoke or fumes from very noxious stuff. Most likely, your pals will be fine, but still do keep vigilant. If something does ever happen that is delayed, there is usually nothing much we can do for an invert but to keep them comfortable and pray for recovery, since the exposure period already passed. They'll just need time to heal, if they had experienced any irritation.
4. Nope! Since nothing hazardous burned, the worst you're going to have to deal with is stink! Airborne things dissipate rather quickly, whether from a melt or a burn. Think scorched popcorn, for example. The smell goes away and the microwave isn't contaminated. A melt releases less chemicals into the air as compared to burning, with smell just being the most noted concern. Anything noxious should mostly be gone if you're airing the place out. The smell might take some weeks.

Cheers!