New board, bad smell.

Few carcinogens have a linear dose-response curve at the low end of the exposure scale.  Stochastic agents such as asbestos being the only exception of which I am aware.  My father remembers when everybody got rid of their leaden appliances during a health scare.  He thinks that we are propagandized into hypochondria by the capitalists so that they can get us to buy new stuff.  He's not just a crank, he is a cognitive psycho-pharmacologist/pharmacognosist by trade.

Anyway, yes, the Napoleonic eggs were and are being broken to make the omelet of the electronics parts we so dearly love.  It's undeniable.  Probably phenols from the epoxy.  It is a smell that takes one aback.  It was a much more prevalent smell during the first era of that superb thermoset, phenolic.  The mechanical requirements of a circuit board are stringent:  Dimensionally stable, hard, chemically stable, thermally stable, low tempco of expansion, high-dielectric, workable.  Also has to be cheap.  So they typically use fiberglass/epoxy composite material.  At one point the epoxy is a thick liquid, so solvents and an exothermic reaction are required to harden it.  And when industry wants things to dry out quickly they use high-velocity/low mw solvents.  Phenols are aromatics.  They reek.

I don't know you well enough to have any idea whether this applies to you, but modern psychology sees hypochondria often as a manifestation in someone with unverbalized family rules against certain forms of success.  Hypochondria excuses inanition without requiring examination of one's unconscious patterns.  Not sayin' that that's you, but you might check it out.

At the exposure level and duration you describe you have nothing to worry about.  Insofar as these substances are in car exhaust and furniture foam, you may have gotten more of these ingested on a ride to the store in a new car.  If the stuff was that nasty, workers at the plant where it was produced would be dropping like flies.  My opinion is that worrying about this event is worse for your health than the event itself.

I am a Chicago lifer and I must say the world around me has, in general, gotten much cleaner.  I wish I could drive some of today's people through Gary, Ind. during the Indochina war era.  Every color of smoke and flame from a thousand smokestacks!  This is where we made our agent orange.  You would feel every alveoli in your lungs from a county away!

To quote my padre:  "Ya' gotta die of somethin'!"

Few carcinogens have a linear dose-response curve at the low end of the exposure scale.  Stochastic agents such as asbestos being the only exception of which I am aware.  My father remembers when everybody got rid of their leaden appliances during a health scare.  He thinks that we are propagandized into hypochondria by the capitalists so that they can get us to buy new stuff.  He's not just a crank, he is a cognitive psycho-pharmacologist/pharmacognosist by trade.

Anyway, yes, the Napoleonic eggs were and are being broken to make the omelet of the electronics parts we so dearly love.  It's undeniable.  Probably phenols from the epoxy.  It is a smell that takes one aback.  It was a much more prevalent smell during the first era of that superb thermoset, phenolic.  The mechanical requirements of a circuit board are stringent:  Dimensionally stable, hard, chemically stable, thermally stable, low tempco of expansion, high-dielectric, workable.  Also has to be cheap.  So they typically use fiberglass/epoxy composite material.  At one point the epoxy is a thick liquid, so solvents and an exothermic reaction are required to harden it.  And when industry wants things to dry out quickly they use high-velocity/low mw solvents.  Phenols are aromatics.  They reek.

I don't know you well enough to have any idea whether this applies to you, but modern psychology sees hypochondria often as a manifestation in someone with unverbalized family rules against certain forms of success.  Hypochondria excuses inanition without requiring examination of one's unconscious patterns.  Not sayin' that that's you, but you might check it out.

At the exposure level and duration you describe you have nothing to worry about.  Insofar as these substances are in car exhaust and furniture foam, you may have gotten more of these ingested on a ride to the store in a new car.  If the stuff was that nasty, workers at the plant where it was produced would be dropping like flies.  My opinion is that worrying about this event is worse for your health than the event itself.

I am a Chicago lifer and I must say the world around me has, in general, gotten much cleaner.  I wish I could drive some of today's people through Gary, Ind. during the Indochina war era.  Every color of smoke and flame from a thousand smokestacks!  This is where we made our agent orange.  You would feel every alveoli in your lungs from a county away!

To quote my padre:  "Ya' gotta die of somethin'!"