Are compressed air dusters safe to use.. such as dusting the cardboard specs off new flips or from a dansco album. I know they are also sold at many hobby shops. Do you guys/gals use it, or is it know to have negative effects like toning?
Yes, but you need to use it correctly. The thing you need to be careful about is that no liquid comes out of the can when it is used. And to do that care must be taken to hold the can completely upright. In other words if you tilt the can a bit then liquid can be expelled along with the air and the liquid is harmful. But even if you clean cardboard specks off albums or carboard 2x2s, new cardboard specks are going to be generated for that is the nature of cardboard. So cleaning off the existing ones really does little good. The best option is not to use them at all.
No it doesn't. There are a few chemicals that do not harm coins, acetone and xylene being among them and some of the most readily available and easily obtained. And they can safely be used for proper cleaning of coins. That said, they will both dissolve many plastics so I would be careful about what kind of coin holders or storage materials you use them on.
Good point about plastics dissolving. I have never had any issues with mylar and acetone. I can't address acetone and other plastics, or say anything about xylene. I'd say test it on one of your 2X2's. I would imagine that any dissolving of plastic would be readily apparent almost immediately since the acetone would be gone in seconds.
Just a comment, even though we say "compressed air dusters", the gas in these cans is not air. The most common are fluorinated hydrocarbons. Air will not liquefy when compressed at less than 500,000 psi and then you would have some liquid oxygen which I would not like to mess with. If you hear liquid in the can, it ain't air.
I used to vacuum my 2x2's with a soft brush to try an minimize the cardboard dust. Another alternative would be a piece of tape on the inside of the 2x2. with the exception of the acetone, all the above methods will produce static electricity which will attract the dust back to the object it was just removed from.
