Can degraded leatherette from Binoculars give off fumes?

[Ephant]

I have a pair of binoculars called Swavorski Habicht 8x30W ordered in 2016 from Europe. It's now worth about $1200. I don't want to spend huge shipping cost to ship it back and forth just to have the leatherette replaced. It is also because when there is rough handling, the prism can misalign and produce collimation errors. Right now there is no problem with the optics. So I don't want to take the risk of shipping it and get optics problems.

I'd like to know what kind of leatherette has rubber. In the binoculars. The whole leatherette degraded to the point where the surface outside is stickly. If I touch it or use cloth to wipe it. There is a black stickiness that can transfer to my fingers or cloth. It is also present in the bare body because it's like the leatherette just melted so I can't just easily remove the leatherette. I plan to use transparent plastic tape to wrap it so I can hold and use it again and not worry about the stickiness.

My only concern now is if I don't remove the degraded leatherette. Can it somehow cause volatile fumes to contaminate my room? Or is the degraded leatherette stable over the next decades I'll use it?

First, what is the chemistry involved when the leatherette become sticky on both sides?

Thank you.

 

[Drakkith]

My only concern now is if I don't remove the degraded leatherette. Can it somehow cause volatile fumes to contaminate my room? Or is the degraded leatherette stable over the next decades I'll use it?

I seriously doubt you will have a problems with 'contamination' from it. The amount of leather is very small and the degradation is slow enough that there should be no issues.

 

[Rive]

Short answer: no.
Not so short answer: wash your hands often.

About handling the item, some googlework for 'sticky pleather' will give you decent findings.

 

[Ephant]

What do you make of it? Darkness is what produced the stickiness?

https://www.dell.com/community/en/c...438-92aa92f154e4c5fbc1a8053a7776c553-Siteplug

"I'm developing real concerns about the black "rubberised" finishes on my 17R3.

I've been having a bit of a clean out at home, and almost all of the devices that I have with similar coatings, have all deteriorated into a weeping sticky mess - really unpleasant to handle. Just today I've seen this on a cordless screwdriver, a USB memory stick, an HP TabletPC battery pack (definitely not a budget item!) and a USB TV receiver.

There is a similar deterioration for some clear plastics - for example some USB cables from a few years ago had a clear coating to show the braided shielding; most of mine have been thrown out because they are so unpleasant to handle. A pair of Philips headphones had a plastic headband, that started sweating and becoming sticky, before disintegrating into pieces of plastic."

He went on to share the views from a chemist:

"
The problem is inherent in the structure of some materials. As a friend of mine (who is an industrial chemist) put it:

These rubbers are a combination of a SBS block copolymer with a low tg and a hard plastic (usually styrene) with a high tg (look it up). The various components of the mix are not completely compatible and will migrate (usually the oil plasticiser) to the surface and become sticky. Place it in full sunlight and the tack will disappear, the surface will "dry off" (oxidise) but will never go back to it's former glory. The oxidised surface marks and scratches easily. You can surface wash the parts using white spirits but the tacky soon returns. Horrible cheap injection moulded rubber. Mitigation = none - change the formula, toxicity = nil. "Real rubber" (SBR, Natural) uses different oils which are quite toxic but very compatible and rarely migrate. These compounds can't be injection moulded and are therefore (more) expensive. e.g car tyres. The reason it's normally black parts that suffer is because the formulation contains heaps of filler and re-work and without black pigment would be an unpleasant dirty greyish greeny brown. So the clever chemists add a splash of black pigment and it comes out jet black. Bootiful.

He then goes on to say: it does seem to develop in the dark ; maybe when it's exposed to the sun the surface oxidises faster and it feels less tacky. This stuff doesn't have to plasticise by migration. If the formula is balanced and good quality materials are used it remains ok. It's so easily tested for problems it's inexcusable for it to go sticky. "

 

[Texas Shooting Star]

Were the binoculars ever exposed to mosquito spray? I had a pair get sticky after I handled them with a deet based spray on my hands. I have a pair of Swarovski 10x42s that I bought domestically at about the same time period (2016-2017) and have used them extensively in the field without problems now that I have learned to keep mosquito spray away from them. The coating is a little different. It's an OD green crinkled plastic looking surface, so we may be compairing apples to oranges, but I hope that this is useful. Star

 

[gleem]

Your concern about the coating on your binoculars should be negligible if you have or use a plastic container to store food products. Our environment is becoming awash in products containing Bisphenols, phthalates, and fluorinated compounds among other things.

 

[Tish62]

I have seen the same effect with foam air filters on electronic devices. The foam deteriorates in to a sticky, black goo that is very difficult to clean up without the use of solvents. It was not accelerated by exposure to sunlight or ozone (from high voltage potentials).
I suspect that some of the recalls of CPAP machines in recent months may have had something to do with the breakdown of foam sound/noise or vibration dampening materials. I am also aware that other CPAP recalls are biological due to ineffective cleaning/ disinfection techniques.

 

[Tom.G]

I suspect that some of the recalls of CPAP machines in recent months may have had something to do with the breakdown of foam sound/noise or vibration dampening materials.

Yes.
I looked in to this at the time for a couple of neighbors that are on CPAP and/or IPAP machines.
Here is an excerpt from the notice:

https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices...-ventilators-bipap-machines-and-cpap-machines

"The polyester-based polyurethane (PE-PUR) foam used in these devices to reduce sound and vibration can break down. If the foam breaks down, black pieces of foam, or certain chemicals that are not visible, could be breathed in or swallowed by the person using the device."