One last message on the subject, then I'm going to go silent and
clear the list airwaves for more important discussions. I swear the
following is all true to my observations, as weird as it may sound.
All during lunch, and after, I had the unmistakable sensation of
burning in my palms and fingers. Washed my hands several times
without relief, tried mechanic's hand cleaner in case it was a
petroleum/grease contamination. Wiped my hands down thoroughly with
isopropyl alcohol. Rubbed in a compound of lanolin and coconut oil to
alleviate dryness, etc, etc.
Outdoors, looking at my palms in the sun, I could see that they were
thinly coated with something that looked like microscopic silver
glitter. Got closer with the aid of a jeweler's lupe, and found that
I could shave my skin surface with an Xacto knife blade and scrape
some of it away.
Mostly while handling the swollen modules this morning, I wore
gloves, but there were a few times, like handling the aluminum case
pieces, that I removed the gloves, figuring that the panels seemed
harmless enough that my tough calloused hide would protect me. Wrong,
these shiny bits were embedded in the skin all over my hands.
As nothing else had worked, and since I wasn't going to attempt to
shave my left and right hands with a hobby knife, I fell back to the
old desert rat's ploy for removing tiny cactus stickers, clear
packaging tape. Tore off some handy length strips from the dispenser
and pasted them on my hands in a more or less organized pattern in an
attempt to remove as much metal dust as I could. In the places I
treated with the tape, much less glitter could be seen. Repeated
treatments brought the tally of particles down to the point where I
have to search for glittery places.
It worked! Eventually, I pulled up a large-ish fragment and got a
better look at what this stuff is. Very sharp edges describes it
pretty well. I don't know exactly what it is, or what its made of,
whether it's a remnant of the manufacturing process, or something
that leaked out of the cell pouches, but you can be sure I won't be
getting near these modules without gloves, a particle mask and a roll
of packaging tape again.
Just relating it here for someone else to take heed if they encounter
a similar situation as I had yesterday and today. Beware!
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