Originally Posted By: Mr Nice
My neighbor had the A/C repair guy service their Carrier A/C unit. I saw the guy bleeding some refrigerant from the line and sniffing it (fumes/gas) to see if it has a burning smell.
Is this common among A/C techs to smell the refrigerant ?
This practice isn't good for the human body.
How is it going to be "bad for the human body?" Don't get me wrong, if you concentrate refrigerant and hork it to the point you're not getting enough oxygen, yeah that's harmful. If you inhale droplets of refrigerant oil, yeah that's harmful. But if you catch a whiff of vented gas to detect the smell of burned insulation indicating a bad compressor (which you can smell from just a few thousand MOLECULES! the nose is extremely sensitive), I fail to see how it could be harmful at all. Refrigerant (R-22, R-134a, R12, R-406a, pretty much all of them) is INERT unless burned at very high temperature to release harmful compounds like phosgene. What he's doing is probably no more harmful than smelling a pan of bacon frying, though if I were going to do this as a part of my daily routine, I'd vent a little oil/refrigerant spray onto the tip of my finger and then smell that, not what's lingering in the air.
So again- what is the mechanism of "harm" you think will occur?
