Safety of plastics used in CPAP machines

How safe is it to inhale air which has been run through plastic tubes? What kind of plastic is used? Does it degrade over time? Especially when the humidifier is used? I cannot sleep without my CPAP machine. However, I am beginning to have some concerns about its safety.

Try searching the forum ... the issue has been discussed many times.

Don't over-think it. Excess worry will hurt you first.

Thanks, ChunkyFrog, but worrying is what I do best! And thanks, khauser, I am new on this forum so I will indeed figure out how to search it. My first call regarding the safety of the plastic was to my provider who told me the FDA wouldn't approve the use of unsafe plastics. Well, we use drinking cups with BPA so I wasn't really sure my provider knew the answer to my question. So I will see what you all had to say about it on this forum.

glassrester wrote:How safe is it to inhale air which has been run through plastic tubes? What kind of plastic is used? Does it degrade over time? Especially when the humidifier is used? I cannot sleep without my CPAP machine. However, I am beginning to have some concerns about its safety.

Reply,

Your mask is also made of plastics, except that the cushion is made of Silicone which is more bio compatible material but it would be too expensive to make the CPAP air tube out of it. I think that the CPAP air tubes are made of PVC. The Sleepweaver mask is made out of cloth that is very similar to a winter ski jacket material. The Sleepweaver mask for Cpap contains no latex or silicone. Do you also question the material of the Flow Generator and the Humidifier?

Google: Biocompatible material

Don't eat the plastic.

Many things are not good for us. We avoid the ones we can--within reason. .
Some things, like bacon, make life worth living.

I think your question is VERY INTELLEGENT, Glassrester. I too have the same question. When tested in the sleep lab, the water ran out in the humidifier, without the tech realizing this, and the plastic heated up and had a really bad plastic smell. I was sleeping, of course, and started to feel more dry at my nose and mouth and smelling more plastic. But of course I was half asleep, so it wasn't until I really woke up that I realized how dry I was and how strong the plastic smell was. Neither the sleep doc nor the sleep expert I work with at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) knew anything about the plastic question, but they thought it was a good question. Sense then, the doc at NIH found a blog where the same thing happened to several people, one of which felt his or her lungs burning. Turns out that in this particular brand there is plastic that connects the sides and bottom of the tray that holds the water (that is heated by the heater beneath it), and this plastic got overheated. I don't have that brand name with me at the moment. So, I am in the process of trying to find out what kind of plastic is in all aspects of CPAP machines that I might get exposed to. THIS is NOT thinking too much. We all know that no one out there is going to take care of you, that you have to be an educated consumer. All those mothers who gave their babies milk from those baby bottles didn't know any differently than to just trust the bottle makers. It wasn't until AFTER the fact that people realized the problem. Fabulous question, Glassrester!

If you opt out of pap therapy, the apnea will kill you much faster than a little BPA.
Good luck with that.

chunkyfrog wrote:If you opt out of pap therapy, the apnea will kill you much faster than a little BPA.
Good luck with that.

+1

chunkyfrog wrote:Many things are not good for us. We avoid the ones we can--within reason. .
Some things, like bacon, make life worth living.

If you want a laugh, check out proposition 65 in California. ANYTHING they've been able to forcefeed/inject into rats, in any quantity, that eventually causes cancer requires them to a put a label on a product containing that substance.

ANYTHING, regardless of whether or not it's a safe dosage, or more than anyone could ever possibly ingest in a lifetime. If you've been to/lived in California you've probably seen this on pretty much everything:

"WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm."

Last year, they added coffee, bread, and french fries to the list. Bacon's on it. Almost every plastic's on it. Lawnmowers have it. Even buildings you enter have that somewhere.



Previous years they'd added progesterone. This is where the story's going.

Progesterone is commonly used to treat breast cancer patients. You have breast cancer, you see someone with a big warning label saying "progesterone is known to cause cancer", are you going to take it? Many didn't want to, but failed to realize that even if it did, your doctor wouldn't rx it to you if it were worse. Also, factor in that they probably force-fed 50 pounds of it to lab rats over the course of a few years, which nobody would ever do to themselves. The warning is far scarier than the probable outcome will be, even if there are legitimately some potentially unsafe materials in the product, the potential risk is much, much smaller than the risk of a cardiac event in the night from apnea.

The burning smell from humidifier tanks is usually the smell of "burning" the water. There's always some contaminants in drinking water, or even in distilled water. As the water evaporates, the contaminants get left behind, and get more and more concentrated. If you let it run dry, the remaining crud cooks on the bottom of the tank and smells bad.

As for dangerous chemicals coming out of the machine, it's probably not a problem. The materials are chosen to be safe. Also, the machine can't put out a lot of chemicals because any chemicals it puts out have to come from the materials in the machine. If the machine was putting out just one gram of some chemical every night, it would lose about one pound of weight over the time period of a year. It might outgas a little bit of some chemical when new, but it simply can't produce chemicals long term without evaporating away. Your machine also mixes a lot of fresh air in. Your machine will be blowing something like 20 lbs of air through itself every night to flush out whatever chemicals are coming out of the machine.

Concern about chemicals is somewhat valid in general. However, the numbers just don't add up for something like a CPAP machine. It's a much more valid concern for something like soda bottles you keep replacing, food, water, or pollutants in the air from some source like a factory that keeps pumping out new chemicals into the air all the time.

Today you need a personal bubble to avoid the unhealthy sterile,
chemical-free zone created for the profitably paranoid.

chunkyfrog wrote:Today you need a personal bubble to avoid the unhealthy sterile,
chemical-free zone created for the profitably paranoid.

I would largely agree with this. However, it is also true that we are starting now to see some long term affects of technology and chemicals that were made popular 15-30 years ago. Microwaves, cell phones, polymers (plastic), chemically enhanced food, etc. A careful balance of awareness vs paranoia is still required. Either polar side (paranoia vs ignorance) is problematic in my view.

Guest wrote:I think your question is VERY INTELLEGENT, Glassrester. I too have the same question. When tested in the sleep lab, the water ran out in the humidifier, without the tech realizing this, and the plastic heated up and had a really bad plastic smell. I was sleeping, of course, and started to feel more dry at my nose and mouth and smelling more plastic. But of course I was half asleep, so it wasn't until I really woke up that I realized how dry I was and how strong the plastic smell was. Neither the sleep doc nor the sleep expert I work with at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) knew anything about the plastic question, but they thought it was a good question. Sense then, the doc at NIH found a blog where the same thing happened to several people, one of which felt his or her lungs burning. Turns out that in this particular brand there is plastic that connects the sides and bottom of the tray that holds the water (that is heated by the heater beneath it), and this plastic got overheated. I don't have that brand name with me at the moment. So, I am in the process of trying to find out what kind of plastic is in all aspects of CPAP machines that I might get exposed to. THIS is NOT thinking too much. We all know that no one out there is going to take care of you, that you have to be an educated consumer. All those mothers who gave their babies milk from those baby bottles didn't know any differently than to just trust the bottle makers. It wasn't until AFTER the fact that people realized the problem. Fabulous question, Glassrester!

Yes, very intelligent. I too have been wondering after reports of hundreds of CPAP related deaths this year. Wait, what?

By the way, I've been hearing bad things about vaccines and fluoride, I can send some links if you're interested...

:p