Searching around for hook-up wire jacket materials on Digi-Key, I am met with a variety of choices for the jacket material, but which ones to choose? For the sake of simple hobby projects, there is an obviosu eliminating answer. How hazardous are the materials?
There are a variety of jacket materials that incorporate fluorine. The advantage of these materials is increased strength and durability, increased working temperature range. The problem though… if they are burned, they release hydrofluoric acid… as gas, into the air that you breathe. And that is a really dangerous nasty chemical that you don’t want touching your body. Now that’s all fine and all if the working temperature range is well beyond soldering temperatures, but as it turns out, the temperature limit is 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s well below the temperature of soldering irons, so any materials with fluorine in them are a no-go for me.
20200306/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETFE
What is irradiated polyethylene? Here’s the key. When polyethylene is exposed to radiation, that causes cross-linking which increases the strength of it. Okay, great! All is good in terms of materials properties and composition as far as I am concerned.
20200306/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene
20200306/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irradiation
20200306/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene
Now, one last material. “Polyphenyl” materials? Well, you look at the chemical composition, you see hexagonal rings. Sure, that acceptable to work with, but be cautious about the whole endocrine disruptor thing, if this gets burned, like accidentally during soldering, it could release endocrine disruptors, you could breathe those in, and it could mess with your endocrine system in all those negatively subtle ways.
20200306/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphenyl_ether