24 Canadian Occupational Safety | www.cos-mag.com
B
rent Stephens was teaching a graduate class on the
physics and chemistry of indoor air pollution in
2013 when a student mentioned to him that the
3D printers in the shop where he worked were
giving off a funny smell. The smell was of burning
plastic, the student told his teacher, who decided to investi-
gate and launched a study on the matter.
"A 3D printer takes a piece of plastic filament and forces
it through a hot nozzle. It's definitely emitting gases and
that's probably what you are smelling. But then there's also
probably some particle emission, probably ultra-fine," says
Stephens, associate professor in the department of civil,
architectural and environmental engineering at Illinois
Institute of Technology in Chicago.
Three-dimensional (3D) printing is the process of making
a physical object from a computer-generated image, typically
by laying down many thin layers of material (or filaments)
in succession. The applications of 3D printing are growing
all the time. Objects printed in 3D are already found in
By Linda Johnson
Some 3D
printers
produce large
amounts of
particles that
present a risk to
the respiratory
health of
workers
HEALTH
IN
3D
