Teflon Tape

[Michael]

Ok, I had a bit of a panic attack to find out that the white stuff I use for sealing water/air fittings is basically pure teflon/ptfe. Right on the package it says PTFE tape and is sometimes called Teflon tape. Now this isn't particularly getting overheated, I would imagine never hotter than boiling temp of water but usually even less. Now what I wonder moreso is how safe this tape is in its inert form? If I touched it or if it were present in the same room, how dangerous is it to the parrots? What if the parrots made direct contact with the tape? Is PTFE dangerous to them in dry form or exclusively as fumes?

Are there any substitutes to teflon tape for the same plumbing purposes?

[entrancedbymyGCC]

I think it is only the fumes that are harmful, but I doubt ingesting it or breathing in a fine dust made of it would do them any good. The temperature of boiling water is WELL below the danger zone for creating harmful fumes. And I don't think any of us have a home that doesn't have this stuff in every threaded plumbing connection, so I think the odds of a problem are very low. I know it is everywhere we've installed faucets, showerheads, etc. It's industry standard. And anything else I can think of that would work as a plumbing sealant would be quite a bit nastier.

I personally wouldn't worry about it. In that use it's pretty benign.

[Michael]

The main reason I ask is because I used it to seal the connections on my paint spray gun that I'm going to be using for some parrot products I am developing. I am using a very special non-toxic paint but I realized that very very trace amounts of this teflon stuff could make their way into the paint as the air passes through a pneumatic system that I had to seal with teflon tape (it was leaking air without it). High pressure air will move through connections sealed with this tape enroute to vaporizing the paint and spraying it on parrot props. I know I'm overthinking this here but I'm working very hard to keep everything parrot safe so at this point this stands out as the most risque element of my setup.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Hmm... that is a different scenario. But unless you are using bottled water, you are probably giving water that has been similarly exposed. I don't THINK, if the tape was properly applied so that it is only on the threads and not lapping over into the inside of the joint, there should be a problem. It's going to stop air leaking out, but the air is going to get very minimal exposure to the tape itself. I have a hard time imagining you could liberate enough molecules to create any exposure at all. I also believe, but have not go the time to look it up, that PTFE in its cold state is very nonreactive. The compounds released at high heat are a different chemical entity. They are damaging to lung tissue when inhaled, and birds have very delicate lungs. And of course humans eat food thats been in contact with Teflon all the time. You could try to look up the safety data on cold Teflon, which must exist somewhere (there should be an MSDS data sheet for your tape somewhere) but I think:
1) Cold teflon is inert and safe to start with
2) When used to seal an air channel, negligible to zero cold teflon could get mixed in with the air
3) Only a small amount of the air will mix with the paint, so the paint adhering to the object would contain only a small fraction of any contaminant that got into the air.

If the joint the air is going through gets very hot, hotter than boiling temperature, then you might have to worry about using the compressor near your birds, but those compounds are pretty volatile and I they wouldn't "Stick to" the item being painted... unless the paint is prone to flaking off in tiny particles, it is way more likely to be eaten than inhaled, anyway.

[Michael]

That's what I probably figured but I guess I just needed some reassurance to reconfirm my suspicions. I'm looking into getting an air regulator/filter to go along with this system (but I'm sure I'll need to teflon tape the other side of it between the hose and spray gun.