Louis Gray says he was racially profiled after trying to buy spray paint to make over his son’s bicycle helmet

  • That seems a bit unlikely. The solvents quickly evaporate off. Unless you are soaking it in solvents, there won’t be enough to cause any relevant effect. Meanwhile the helmet is exposed to UV light on a daily basis, which will also degrade it over time.

    You are also not going to burn from briefly touching laundry detergent, but keeping lots of it on your skin would be a problem.

    • datelmd5sum@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Helmets are usually polycarbonate and the common solvent in spray paint is xylene. Xylene causes extreme degradation in polycarbonate. If you don’t know if the helmet and the paint are compatible, it’s not safe to paint it.