I too had a lesion excised from my noggin. In my case it was found incidentally through my interest in racing skateboards and was a relatively uncommon and extremely slow developing type. I reside close to Johns Hopkins where I had it removed by the boss, and I follow up with delightful Perfusion MRIs 3x year for life at NIH. If you ever need or want to talk craniotomies, drop a PM. Mine was all grade 2 and I'm perfect going on 4 years, but you know how it is.
Anyway.
Why'd I get this thing, I ask myself. Could it be about 40 years of Safety Kleen, lacquer thinner, nitrate and butyrate model airplane dope, plastics, composites, welding, brazing, washing parts in trichloroethylene, MEK, cyclohexanone, the crazy stuff the lab robots I designed shuttled about....
Since the event I've definitely been a much more frequent user of an organic vapor cartridge filter mask and nitrile gloves. I spray outside. I use fans.
Ultimately, and this is on the basis of a lot of discussion with the chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins and the head of the neuro-oncology branch of the National Cancer Institute at NIH, your most common brain lesions, astrocytomas and oligodendrogliomas, have root a root cause based on genetics more than anything else. The only compound I've heard that's assured to give you the brain cancer is good old PVC.
Still, pays to be careful. Respirators are cheap. I like 3M and write the install date on the filters.
