Prior to the Navfac upgrades, people (as many of us know) had to work without having the vacumn system. We had to vacumn the carbon out of the trays and around them manually. We had to breath this dusty air. Everyone knows about the immediate smell of the carbon upon entering the display room.
I wonder if anyone has had respiratory problems (like black lung disease) because of the continual breathing of the dust while working in the display room. It would get on our uniforms and the black phlim coming from my nose after a watch was very noticable. I only worked in the system for about 4 years without the vacumn system. I would hate to have worked in the system display rooms for the duration from the beginning to retirement! It seems like it would have affected the "old timers" for sure!

I never had any long term respiratory problems from it, but it was a long time after I left the system before I had a good sense of smell.
As far as long term problems, just look what it did to Smokey!

There was an entry in the forum back in Dec 2012 from someone considering filing for disability based at least partially on their exposure to the carbon dust. I know my very first command (Bermuda) did not have the vacuum system installed, and I believe at least one of the other two commands (Argentia, then Keflavik) I served at over my initial enlistment in the 1969-1973 time frame also did not have the vacuum system at least part of the time I was there.
I have COPD nowadays and I too always wondered if there's ever been a study done about the long-term effects of the carbon dust on our lungs, especially since I had some kind of respiratory attack in Bermuda which the corpsman, who acted as our doctor, said he *thought* was an attack of pleurisy.
However, I was also a smoker of many years and "assumed" that any damage I'd suffered to my respiratory tract was probably more related to my smoking, but there was no real proof of either. I live in West Virginia, though, which is a state *full* of coal miners who breathed coal dust, which is carbon, and now have black lung disease from it, so I often wonder if that carbon dust many not have been the "seed" of my COPD. Most of my medical records from back then are "lost" now, which makes it even harder to prove cause.
I tend to believe it *had* to have had an effect. I too remember the black phlegm and hocking the crap up for hours after a watch, the black nasal passages and my hands would be black from annotating, and I'd have black smudges on my face, looked quite a bit like a coal miner....it was in our hair, on our clothes, it permeated everything.....and the smell you noted too.
Add to that the "burns". I remember having to don a fire suit and two of us would do the burn downstairs in the hot furnace room, while others upstairs unrolled the grams into the furnace. Then we had to empty the ashes and make certain everything had burned, then dispose of the ashes, the whole time breathing the carbon.
I doubt they'll ever admit the harm of that exposure though. Those of us who worked with the gram paper back then know what it was, but who *else* does? Certainly not any doctor I've ever tried to explain it to.

Down in Antigua (76-77) our furnace was out. So we had a burn barrel which was preferated to allow the air to get in for better burning. We had a cranking handle on one of the ends. We would crank the barrel while the grams were burning. The smoke would go up and sometimes if the wind was blowing right it would engulf a person who was walking from admin down to the T-building or walking up to admin. I do remember the smell and the smudges on my nose and hands. It will always be a remembrance which was actually a good one. I still think back on the officers or chiefs that would catch the wrath of a "cranker" who would laugh and tell the one with him.......we got him or her! The Navfac experiences that we had!!! HA!

Nothing better than the smell of carbon dust in the morning! Doug, I don't know if you remember that Marc Reed had a nasty skin reacton to the carbon. The side of his hand was eaten like it was cancer. I think those early days of carbon dust and the fact that we all smoked was the cause of any problems we may suffer today. Those early days without the vacuum were a lot of fun with messing with new officers by fabricating lines of interest that could mysteriously disappear. I pulled this on the new CO at Bermuda. Can't remember his name but he was always walking the beams like he didn't trust us. Jack Thompson was my supervisor at the time. I think Jim Patterson was the watch officer. The old man was dumfounded when he saw the line, went to get Patterson only to return to the beam and find no line. Great stuff, Jack knew right away what I had done. The old man found out what had happened and came up and apologized to me and commented on how clever that was. He never walked my beams again. Oh, the good old days!

I remember the carbon smell ( and taste) even today. In Lewes in 72-3 it was part of the monthly fielday to get up in the cieling and hoover uip all the dust that had collected. Job went to the person that had ****** of the sup the most!

I also remember making phantom lines on the grams...but you had to remember to blow it away before it went through the rollers or it would be pressed into the paper. Bad news when QA got ahold of it , and you!

We did make some "good looking" lines!! I did one to OTC Harvey Robke once and he (this was in Antigua) and Bob Spivey (our Sup) was in on it. He called for the chief to come over there and I blew the line away! When he came back and didn't see it he thought he spent to much time partying the night before!! Him and his maroon socks!!! LOL!

We got pretty good at it at NAVFAC Bermuda, Section I circa 1974-75. I recall using my ID card to bend small piles of excess carbon to create authentic looking "knee ins" then tamping them down with the flat side of the card unsuspecting Readers walked by and called a Supervisor. A simple scrape with the card or gentle blowing would erase all traces of said US Nuc. It got bad when we created a single line detection of a Russian sub one boring Eve watch. Unfortunately, we forgot to completely get rid of the evidence and it "rolled" over the top and got hard pressed through the rollers. The unannotated "detection" was found by the guys in Post Analysis the following morning and reported. Our Watch Section was called in on our off time for "missing" the detection. Our red faces were priceless - wish we had cell phones with cameras back then! Anyway, I was told they didn't believe our Watch Coordinator and let the contact stand as valid. I suspect the Chain of Command was too embarrassed to cancel it. Oh how I miss those days!

Straight laced Jim acting up on watch?????? I don't believe it, must have been them other guys!

It was Dennis Christianson! I swear! (<:

The memories of the "good ol' days" that we have! I think the mid-watches were a hoot! The dayworkers would be fast asleep (perhaps not ALL of them were out partying) and we would think about things to do on boring watches. Of course we did the training! I believe that the "carbon lines" must have been played at every Navfac!!