- Alrighty guys, Friday night here in Melbourne.
Now, normally I would be making myself a little fire,
putting a bit of music on,
maybe watching the AFL footy, the Aussie rules.
But instead, no,
I'm here talking to you about this stuff, foam.
Bloody foam.
I am sick to death of foam,
but we need to talk about it because
from what I'm seeing online
on the Facebook groups and the forums,
there is a whole lot of confusion going on
and it's not your fault, it's Phillips's fault.
They have not given you adequate information.
And that's my job to give you the information
so that you can make the good informed decisions
that, from what I can see, you're not making.
So what I'm seeing is this so far, I'm seeing comments like,
"I haven't seen any bits of black foam
in my humidification chamber, so I'm okay.
I don't use an ozone machine, so I'm okay.
I've been using my machine for three years
and haven't had any problems, I'm okay."
I get it.
You all love your Phillips CPAP machines.
You use them every night
and they've become part of your life,
but we really need to take this seriously.
And the reason is because it is serious.
Now, you haven't been given all the information.
This is information that your physician receives.
You're not privileged to it, although you should be.
And hopefully, after hearing this information,
you'll go, "Nick, you know what?
You're right.
I need to consider this, I need to talk to my doctor about
continuing to use my CPAP machine."
Before we get into this,
I just wanna give you a real heads up here.
I put up a little poll on the YouTube channel, which was,
"How long do you think it's gonna take
to replace and repair all these machines?"
And I put up one month, two month,
how long is a piece of string?
And the answer is how long is a piece of string.
The estimates at the moment is one year
and many think that is an underestimate.
One year to fix this issue.
So I just wanted to give you that straight off the bat,
this is gonna be a long road back
for all you Phillips users out there
so you need to know that.
Now many of you will know the basics about this recall
and about the foam breaking down
and all that sort of stuff.
But this is some stuff that you might not know, okay?
So listen up.
There are two potential hazards outlined
in the safety notification for the affected devices.
Now the first one is obviously the foam degradation,
but this is the important part,
"The absence of visible particles
does not mean the foam breakdown has not already begun.
Lab analysis of the degraded foam
reveals the presence of potentially harmful chemicals,
including Toluene-diamine, Toluene-diisocyanate
and Diethylene-glycol.
Now I'm gonna talk about those three chemicals first.
Let's start with the first one,
Toluene-diamine.
- Me fail English?
That's unpossible.
- Now, this is a chemical
that was banned from being used in hair dye.
"After extensive scientific research,
the European Commission concluded
that it cannot be considered safe for hair coloring."
This chemical, you can't even put on your hair follicles.
It's going into your lungs.
All right, that's number one.
The second one, Toluene-diisocyanate.
"A powerful irritant to the mucous membranes of the eyes,
gastrointestinal and respiratory tract.
Death from severe asthma has been reported.
Nasal congestion, dry nose,
sore throat, cold-like symptoms, cough, shortness of breath,
wheezing and chest tightness are all included as symptoms.
Please see your physician."
That's number two.
Number three, Diethylene-glycol.
"Inhalation exposure can cause
irritation of the mucus membranes
and respiratory discomfort and cough."
All right, so that one doesn't sound too bad.
So there are the three chemicals that you're exposed to
due to the potential breakdown of the foam,
but there's more.
And now the number two hazard,
and this is the big one, I think,
Volatile Organic Compounds, VOC.
"Chemical emissions from foam.
Lab testing performed for and by Phillips
has also identified the presence of VOC,"
these Volatile Organic Compounds,
"which may be emitted
from the sound abatement foam component
of the affected devices.
Standard testing identified two compounds,
which may be admitted from the foam
that are outside the safety thresholds,
Dimethyl Diazine
and Phenol 2,6-bis dimethylethyl methylpropyl.
That sounds shit.
All right, so I really need to break this down for you all.
So basically what's happened is this,
Phillips has gone and grabbed a brand new DreamStation One
off the shelf, never been used before,
and they've hit the on button.
And then they're measuring the air, you know,
the chemical composition of the air from the output.
And what they found is that the air, from day one,
contains these Volatile Organic Compounds, these VOCs,
and they're outside the safety thresholds, from day one.
And they're also saying
that this can continue for the life of the machine.
That's fucked.
All right, these are toxic carcinogenic compounds
outside the safety range.
This is why we need to take this seriously.
This is why they have said, "Stop using your machines."
So all of you out there right now who are going,
"Oh, I haven't seen any particles. I feel fine."
No, this is what's happening.
Now let's talk about the potential harm.
And I'm not trying to scare you guys, all right.
I know this is really distressing
and you need to talk about this with your doctor
about, you know, if you need to continue treatment.
If you're worried about continuing treatment,
this is stuff you need to talk about.
So, "VOCs may cause irritation of the airway, inflammation
and this may be particularly important
for patients with underlying lung disease
or reduced cardiopulmonary reserve."
CAPD, if you've got asthma, things like that.
"The potential risks of chemical exposure
due to off-gassing include
headache, dizziness, irritation,
eye, nose, respiratory tract, skin,
hypersensitivity, nausea, vomiting,
toxic and carcinogenic effects."
And that's it, guys.
This is the facts, all right.
This is the information being provided by Phillips
to the physicians.
It's not Gary on the Facebook page.
It's the information for the physicians.
And the information is saying that the foam
is releasing gases above safe levels
that are toxic and carcinogenic,
and it's doing it from day one.
And it continues for the life of the machine.
So quit the bullshit,
quit all the jargon on Facebook and on the forums.
Here's the information, you have it now,
you have the chemicals.
If you've got really serious sleep apnea.
Talk to your doctor about, you know, the best way forward,
but that's the information.
All right, now I wanna talk to you about
the DreamStation Two foam.
So I'm gonna pull over my workbench
and we're gonna discuss that.
All right, so first
this is the foam of the DreamStation One,
this black polyester polyurethane foam.
It is durable guys, look, it is fricking durable.
Now here's the foam of the DreamStation Two.
All right, it's a whole lot more porous.
All right, I've taken it out
and it's not as durable, watch this.
See that, look at this.
Now, did you see how easy that was to pull out
and break up this foam?
Now here's why I wanted to show you this.
I think Philips is using
your SoClean and your ozone generators as a smoke screen,
as a bit of a scapegoat
to divert attention away from the fact that from day one,
that foam is bad foam to begin with.
Because from day one, we know that it's already releasing
unsafe levels of gases that are toxic and carcinogenic.
So I don't think it really matters about the ozone.
If it did matter, they wouldn't make this new foam that
breaks down, when the old foam is super resilient.
It's really hard to break.
Look at it, it's super strong.
So the fact that they've kept the foam
in the exact same spot,
still in the exact same casing
means that it doesn't really have anything
to do with the breakdown of the foam.
It purely has to do
with the chemical composition of the foam,
polyester based polyurethane foam.
It's not good, Google it.
Okay, so this is my DreamStation One turbine casing
that I did the operation on.
And normally you have your polyurethane foam
sort of jammed in there.
That's all sealed up and I made these two incisions
and then took out the foam.
And then I taped them both back up again.
What you wanna do, if you are gonna do this surgery,
like I've done here on the DreamStation Two,
is you wanna make your incision on the inside wall,
where the turbine goes.
So the turbine normally sits in there.
You wanna do it on the inside wall.
You don't wanna do it on the top wall here.
The reason being is if you do it on the inside wall,
so you take that piece out and then you take that piece out,
what you can do, this is in a DreamStation One of course,
not the DreamStation Two.
When you put your turbine back in,
you can grab your turbine casing, put that on top,
and then that seals it down so it's air tight.
You don't have to seal the holes up like I did
because it's all inside the turbine casing, you see?
So basically what's gonna happen is this,
all of you with DreamStation One machines
are going to get a new casing like this.
But instead of having
this black polyurethane foam inside here,
you're gonna have a new one,
that's gonna have the snowflake foam inside.
And that is the fix.
But that fix is gonna take a very, very long time.
All right, they still haven't even got
regulatory approval yet.
But once they do get that,
we're talking a year at the least for the fix, all right.
And that's an underestimate.
So you guys really need to consider right now
your loyalty to Phillips.
I mean, is it worth waiting around,
waiting for this new foam that looks to me
like it's pretty shit anyway, giving you a new casing,
waiting for them to put it in your machine
or do you just go and grab yourself another machine,
a ResMed and Fischer & Paykel,
there's DeVilbiss,
there's a lot of other machines.
I would dump Phillips.
They are not a good company.
Go and do your research, look at history.
You don't have to go back too far,
go back 10 years and have a look what the FDA has done
shutting down factories, looking at the complaints.
They are as dodgy as it comes.
And that's it guys.
Look, I've given you all the information
I can possibly give you on foam gate.
I've had a gut full of foam, excuse the pun.
For those of you that have been with me
for a long, long time.
I know you know, I'm not out to get you on this.
I know you know, I have your best interests at heart.
I'm giving you the honest information.
There's a lot of new people to the channel
who don't know me, who don't know what I'm about.
I know I can be a little bit confronting
and it looks like I'm stirring the pot a lot of the time,
but I'm not, I'm on your side.
I don't get anything out of this.
I'm not sitting here on a Friday night for the fun of it.
Okay, I don't enjoy it.
I'm doing it for you, I'm looking out for you guys.
So please show a little bit of respect.
Yeah, look out for one another.
That's what I'm about, that's what you're about.
Join the Facebook group if you want,
that's a really good group, a lot of supportive people.
Join the newsletter I'll keep you up to date
and subscribe to the channel if you want to.
But good luck guys, all right.
It's gonna be a long road and I wish you all the best.
Take care, bye.