Silicon free polishes?

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:49:49 -0700, Darryl Ramm wrote:

Mer's lack of clear marketing is more a headscratcher.

Maybe they're not so unclear after all - see below.

There are sites
claiming Mer products are silicone free. As for the Mer website
"silicon" content (note they say silicon not silicone). Who knows what
they mean to say but likely most *polishes* do contain silicon dioxide
or similar.

I wrote "silicone" because I assumed they'd misspelled it, given that so
many polishes contain silicones. So blame me for that.

As I said, the Mer MSDS only mentions EINECS 265-150-3 (hydro-treated
heavy naptha) and CAS 64742-48-9 (non-aromatic hydrocarbon solvents). The
risk-phrase codings translate as follows:

[-]R10 = Flammable.
[Xn] R65 = Harmful: may cause lung damage if swallowed.
[-] R66 = Repeated exposure may cause skin dryness or cracking.

That's everything in MSDS section 3 (Composition).

Now whether they contain one of the silicone oils is a
different question.

Presumably, you would expect silicones to appear in an MSDS if they are
product ingredients, so the implication is that there are indeed no
silicones in this polish.

It could make sense to put silicon in this type of product to act as a
mild abrasive because its fairly inert and only moderately hard (7 on
Moh's scale, same as quartz, so toward the soft end of most industrial
abrasives).


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martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
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