Alcohol leaches plasticizers in vinyl and alcohol cleaning record cleaning FUD

[Todd Dodds]

OP @Cosmo-D says ".... invariably someone responds with the claim "alcohol leaches plasticizers from vinyl".

Alcohol doesn't leach the plasticizer from vinyl. The plasticizer itself leaches from the vinyl. It just sort of oozes out over time, and sits on the surface of the plastic or vinyl (with some maybe evaporating into the air, which is what worries the envoronmental types).
If plastic or vinyl products sit around in a warehouse long enough before they are further converted to a final product, there may be enough plasticizer that has migrated to the surface of the film to interfere with with whatever converting is to be done.
Think of big rolls of various flexible (thanks, in part, to the plasticizers) films that are used for packaging foods. First the film is made, then it may be printed with lovely colored inks that may not print with the slimy plasticizer on it. A quick alcohol wipe before printing solves that problem.

A few percent of rubbing alcohol in your favorite record washing solution will help. You can commonly find at your grocer or drug stare anywhere from 60% to 95%. Anhydrous (water free) may be a hassle to find. But anyone that worries about the "other additives" in a jug of alcohol has a screw loose.

 

[Pythonman]

I have records I have cleaned with 1 part 91% isopropyl to 4 parts distilled water making 1 gallon. Then I always added 13 drops of Kodak Photoflow to complete the concoction. Used this Stereophile sourced recipe since 1994. Thought it did a good enough job. Recently I got a VPI Prime with a Hana SH and have noticed a few of my older records have gotten noisy. Well cleaning them with my old stuff wasn’t helping so I broke down and ordered some real RCM fluid in the form of TM-8 Super Record Cleaning fluid. It has no alcohol and has “cleaned” my formerly cleaned records to almost like new. Record that sounded severely worn now sound like they’re on their 5 playing. Never using alcohol on my records again. Leaves too much junk behind.

 

[mprince]

I have records I have cleaned with 1 part 91% isopropyl to 4 parts distilled water making 1 gallon. Then I always added 13 drops of Kodak Photoflow to complete the concoction. Used this Stereophile sourced recipe since 1994. Thought it did a good enough job. Recently I got a VPI Prime with a Hana SH and have noticed a few of my older records have gotten noisy. Well cleaning them with my old stuff wasn’t helping so I broke down and ordered some real RCM fluid in the form of TM-8 Super Record Cleaning fluid. It has no alcohol and has “cleaned” my formerly cleaned records to almost like new. Record that sounded severely worn now sound like they’re on their 5 playing. Never using alcohol on my records again. Leaves too much junk behind.

What do you rinse with after the wash?

 

[stalislawlem]

OP @Cosmo-D says ".... invariably someone responds with the claim "alcohol leaches plasticizers from vinyl".

Alcohol doesn't leach the plasticizer from vinyl. The plasticizer itself leaches from the vinyl. It just sort of oozes out over time, and sits on the surface of the plastic or vinyl (with some maybe evaporating into the air, which is what worries the envoronmental types).

So that's what I've noticed when opening old record boxes of classical silver label Telefunkens; I always wondered what the wetness was.

 

[Pythonman]

What do you rinse with after the wash?

The TM-8 is a one step cleaner, so no rinse required or needed from what I can tell. Never bothered with a rinsing cycle before although it may have helped some. I have a gallon of freshly made up VPI concentrate and distilled water that is on the sudsy side. Haven't tried it out yet because I'm pretty sure I'll need to rinse and I'm going to need more brushes etc. to do that right. Hope it works. No alcohol in it either.

 

[jcamero]

Come see, come saw, mostly come saw.

 

[ConradH]

Alcohol is a great solvent- for things that dissolve in alcohol. I've always believed that before you design a cleaning process, you need to identify the enemy. What are you trying to remove? That may be different for different records, depending on how they've been handled and stored. I've used the common alcohol formula with OK success, but concluded the alcohol wasn't doing much. For old and flea market records I use a weak (lab) detergent solution, followed by a very good rinse. I actually think the rinse is the most important part of the cleaning process. I've used a lot of Photo-flo in my darkroom days and would not add it to a record cleaner. Kodak says not to use it for that application. Its main ingredient is propylene glycol. That has a low vapor pressure and doesn't evaporate readily, so if you don't rinse you probably end up with a slight gummy layer of glycol. OTOH, if you do rinse it should be a decent wetting agent.

 

[ridgeway]

sk an I make my own record cleaning solution using distilled water, 91% isopropyl alcohol and technical grade Triton X-100 nonionic surfactant. All are food/pharmaceutical grade products and readily available.

Food grade? The Triton x-100 SDS says "Harmful by ingestion" and includes first aid procedures for ingestion. It's a good cleaner, but I'd be in no rush to put it on my food

 

[dcmfan]

Food grade? The Triton x-100 SDS says "Harmful by ingestion" and includes first aid procedures for ingestion. It's a good cleaner, but I'd be in no rush to put it on my food

FYI- "Food Grade" doesn't equal "Food"


The term food grade, often hyphenated as 'food-grade', is used to describe tools, supplies, and equipment that are of sufficient quality to be used for food production, food storage, or food preparation purposes.

 

[DesertTwang]

I wonder about those things as well. I do have a science background (biology), which came with quite a few and very intense classes in chemistry and physics. I agree with much of what the OP brought up except the notion of vinyl and other plastics being held together by van-der-Waals forces. Most plastics are polymers assembled from simple molecules arranged in a repetitive structure and held together by covalent bonds, the strongest bonds in chemistry.

I, too, get suspicious when I read, for example, about alcohol supposedly dissolving some cantilever-stylus connections. The stylus cleaner I use comes from Sleeve City and I swear it smells identical to nail polish. Now, nail polish is about as plastic-dissolving as it gets (try cleaning a CD jewel case and marvel at the results), but the sales people at Sleeve City assured me they have been using that cleaner for decades with no ill-effects.

So I'm left to wonder whether we tend to worry way too much about this getting damaged or that coming apart when using certain cleaning agents...

 

[DesertTwang]

I always clean my records with IPA. Sometimes I even clean them with Stout.

You should not be using those on vinyl records. You should be using Dogfish Head, as that is the official beer of Record Store Day 2018.

 

[DesertTwang]

I don't know about everyone else, but I don't play records in a clean room, and I am cleaning a record, not prepping for open heart surgery.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, easy now. Some would say that cleaning records is by far the more delicate procedure...

 

[MannyE]

So.... um, in conclusion.

Does alcohol leach plasticizers out of records or not?

If I haven't missed something it goes .... no no no yes no no yes no yes no no no no... And still not a single footnote to a scientific study proving one way or the other. You would think that with the 100 year (so close it doesn't matter) history of the vinyl record that somewhere some university or record stamper or the library of congress might have done a controlled scientific study with all the right protocols in place to produce a verifiable result?

 

[SoundsAlike]

The rubbing alcohol you buy from the pharmacy is stored in a vinyl container.

 

[MannyE]

The rubbing alcohol you buy from the pharmacy is stored in a vinyl container.

Ha! Yes it is! For years and years.

 

[Cosmo-D]

I wonder about those things as well. I do have a science background (biology), which came with quite a few and very intense classes in chemistry and physics. I agree with much of what the OP brought up except the notion of vinyl and other plastics being held together by van-der-Waals forces. Most plastics are polymers assembled from simple molecules arranged in a repetitive structure and held together by covalent bonds, the strongest bonds in chemistry.

I, too, get suspicious when I read, for example, about alcohol supposedly dissolving some cantilever-stylus connections. The stylus cleaner I use comes from Sleeve City and I swear it smells identical to nail polish. Now, nail polish is about as plastic-dissolving as it gets (try cleaning a CD jewel case and marvel at the results), but the sales people at Sleeve City assured me they have been using that cleaner for decades with no ill-effects.

So I'm left to wonder whether we tend to worry way too much about this getting damaged or that coming apart when using certain cleaning agents...

You're right about the plastic. I wasn't thinking about how polymerization actually works.

I've always found it kind of suspicious when people talk about alcohol dissolving stylus-cantilever bonds. I figured they would use some kind of epoxy to affix the two—which when it cures is pretty impervious to most things. I wouldn't put anything that smells like acetone near anything I valued. The stuff does indeed melt whatever plastic gunpla (robot models) are mode of (I think some parts are PVC while others are polystyrene and ABS plastic). I don't know what it would do to epoxy. It could be worse: at least styluses aren't held together with shellac like many fountain pens are. Now thats a hobby where you need to pay attention to your cleaning agents. Depending on the vintage you can destroy the sacs or mess up the body if you use the wrong cleaning agent. The recommended cleaning agent for the internals of most pens is 10% ammonia in distilled water. I wonder how well that would work on vinyl?

 

[heyraz]

Does alcohol leach plasticizers out of records or not?

Why not post this question on an engineering forum. Chemicals and materials.

 

[ETLS]

Those vinyl bottles are not recommended for turntable use.

 

[phantomrebel]

This is an interesting question that brings up some points we can try to understand from our experiences. Firstly, we need to accept that the science is thin in this field as there aren't many research studies specifically related to phonograph records since there is currently no financial incentive (for obsolete media) and even in their heyday, nobody really expected the media to be preserved. However, art curators now have many plastic items that are considered worthy of preservation and studies of extraction on PVC-based artifacts have been done. For example, mass spec of treated artifacts (not records) has shown that alcohol concentrations greater than 60% can release PVC additives (see http://www.academia.edu/9376344/A_m...inyl_chloride_surfaces_of_collections_objects). So the "extraction of plasticizers" is a known, measured phenomenon. Should we be concerned on our records, where plasticizers aren't that prevalent since they are PVC-PVA copolymers? Maybe not, but plasticizers are only one additive in the resin used in record production. Our records mostly contain added fillers, stabilizers, lubricants, conditioners, colorants, antistats and other compounds that can be extracted from the record surface and have some effect. If you've ever wiped your skin with isopropanol, you'll know how this solvent is effective at removing surface oil and leaving your skin very dry (you will also note that alcohol swabs are frequently included in kits where something is to be applied to a hard surface). A dry, lubricant-free surface might not be a good thing if you consider optimal coefficients of friction (and accompanying noise levels) when playing phonograph records. These things also effect wear and hence, future payback. There is a lot of scientific research in this regard, from Robert Pardee, Shure, Ball Corp., and others. Many reports can be found here: http://www.aes.org/publications/anthologies/downloads/jaes_disk-anthology-2.pdfn if you are interesting in such things. I am, and have come to the conclusion to keep alcohol levels low (15% or less) in my wash solutions. Higher alcohol concentrations offer no benefit in the detergent formulations we have studied, and may (for the reasons described above) actually be harmful.

Edit: I should add that this is a complicated subject- we want to remove those oily fingerprints yet preserve the lubricated record surface. This is where specific detergents come into play and, as an ex-scientist, I feel there is a lot of compromise and further work to be done.

 

[Champco]

If, when performing this final rinse, you still see the record just looking "wet", then there is still surfactant on the surface--water will "bead" on a truly clean vinyl surface--just like a freshly waxed car

This is not always the case when I clean records. I liked seeing the smooth water when rinsing. i thought it was cleaner. I only clean really dirty records and usually only once. Warm water and a micro fiber cloth and a finger tip of Dawn. By going back and forth following the groove patterns the water sometimes darkens and the grooves can be felt. Rinse in RO water and dried immediately with another micro fiber. it gets all but the finest pops out. So far I have seen nothing that gets out the finest groove noise. Friend with a VPI is of the same mind. He cleans thousands of records. I do have a theory on what is left behind that will not wash out...... I would need a good microscope to see it. I think its organic. Pollin....