I stumbled across an article by Michael Fulks, which serves as a reminder that photography can be dangerous:

The realization that I was slowly being poisoned finally came to me after I set up a darkroom in the laundry room of my house. While it was much larger than the closets and bathrooms I had used before this time, I noticed that I was only able to work for about 15 minutes at a time and then I would always begin to feel anxious and have trouble concentrating.

It was only after I had an assistant helping me that I fully realized the severity of the situation. After about 10 minutes working over the sink she complained of trouble breathing. After about 15 minutes she said, “We’ve got to get out of here. We’re being poisoned!”

It turns out that they were being poisoned by gases caused by a chemical reaction of the copper in the work surfaces and the chemicals used for film developing. It’s a good little story, and a decent heads-up, too!

Oh, and also, if you do your own film developing, have you seen our film developing database??