Can u get sick from inhaling fumes from a blowtorch
There are different types of torches, but most of them (propane, butane, and acetylene for example) burn fuels that result in carbon dioxide and water as their main combustion products. There is always going to be some incomplete combustion within the flame, so you will also end up with tiny amounts of carbon monoxide as well as possibly some carbon as soot.
With carbon dioxide and water vapor, the only real danger is if you have so much of these that you don’t have enough oxygen to breathe, so in most circumstances this isn’t worth worrying about. If you have a bunch of people using torches in a confined space with poor ventilation, oxygen deprivation might become a concern.
Carbon monoxide is a lot more dangerous, but again, in normal torch use you aren’t producing enough of it for it to have any sort of significant effect on your body. Get enough of it though and it can cause some major problems.
Inhaling large quantities of carbon soot into your lungs isn’t very healthy, but again, it’s not likely to be an issue under normal torch use since you aren’t producing enough of it to be significant.
This book is a go to industrial book where such hazards are concerned : Recognition of Health Hazards in Industry: A Review of Materials Processes
William A. Burgess
If I recall correctly, this rated gas welding / cutting as a high to medium risk on CO.
Also, IIRC there were two reasons for this (with poor ventilization of course):
A. Welders commonly use a reducing flame (oxygen starved) so it makes more Carbon monoxide than usual.
B. Sometimes things are welded or cut with combustibles inside them that are starved for oxygen. For example, consider a steel pipe with a piece of wood or even WD40 sprayed on the inside of it. Say this pipe is long enough so there is not enough air flow. Now if this pipe is heated or attempted to be cut, there will be a lot of CO accumulating inside.
Blow torch is a really, really old term. Do you actually mean an antique, gasoline fueled thing that you have to pump up like this:
Or do you mean a propane torch like a Bernz-o-matic? They use a torch/handle that screws onto a lightweight propane cylinder.
Or an oxy-acetylene torch? They use two large, very heavy high pressure cylinders connected to the torch/handle with red and green hoses?
A true gasoline fueled blow torch would emit a nightmarish mix of partially burned hydrocarbons and god know what else.
Other posters have explained the more modern fuels.
Dennis
And when you say “fumes”, do you mean the results of the combustion, or just the unburned fuel gas directly from the tank?