Safety
Rags, cloth, and paper saturated with drying oils may combust spontaneously (ignite) due to heat released during the curing process. This hazard is greater when oil-soaked materials are folded, bunched, or piled together, which allows heat to accumulate and accelerate the reaction. Precautions include: wetting rags with water and spreading them away from direct sunlight; closing them off completely in water inside air-tight metal containers designed for such applications; or storing them immersed in solvents in suitable closed containers.
Although spontaneous combustion has been said to occur rags soaked in paint thinners, this is not true unless a drying oil is used as a thinner. However, classical paint thinners do not include drying oils. The danger is due to rags soaked in oil based paints, as it is due to the drying oils in the paints (or varnishes), not thinners per se unless they have been mixed with drying oils such as linseed.
Read more about this topic: Drying Oil
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.”
—Stephen Vizinczey (b. 1933)
“The Declaration [of Independence] was not a protest against government, but against the excess of government. It prescribed the proper role of government, to secure the rights of individuals and to effect their safety and happiness. In modern society, no individual can do this alone. So government is not a necessary evil but a necessary good.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“There is always safety in valor.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)