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Yup. Anecdotal story, a friend of my father was making a boat for himself and he became so sensitized to epoxy that he had to stop working on it and hire somebody else to finish it for him.

(For boatbuilding, the usual choice is polyester resin rather than epoxy, which is nasty in other ways. You don't wanna be inhaling those styrene vapors all day long.)



If you haven't had the misfortune of discovering this yourself, polyester resin is EVEN WORSE smelling than epoxy resin.

I got a kit with some fiberglass to fix a cracked bumper on a car. Don't want to do that ever again.


I'm no professional boatbuilder, but I've been helping out friends and family with DIY glassfiber boat repairs and improvements. So yes, I have experience of both polyester resin and epoxy. They have their own issues, as discussed in this thread.

Epoxy is highly allergenic (or whatever the word is), so you should be pretty careful about using nitrile gloves or similar when working with it. Personally I don't find the smell particularly bad, and it's not very strong, at least compared to polyester resin.

Polyester, yes it smells bad, and as I mentioned in my parent comment that's styrene vapors you're inhaling, which is a known carcinogen. If I were to do some bigger job with polyester, I'd definitely want some pretty hefty breathing filter. But for the occasional one-off thing, particularly if you can do it outdoors, meh..




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