Some pony 'cancer' questions?

[Pythia]

Hmm, I'm currently in the process of removing the (very well stuck on) head of a Nightglider I recently got. She's in pretty good condition except for tail rust, surface dirt, and agreat dirty cancer splodge on her body just below her neck seam. BUT looking at it closely, while the central brown dot in on her body, the discolouration around it extends over the neck seam and onto her neck. Which makes me wonder about it being spreadable.
Of course, it miht be that whatever causes the discolouration around the central dot can leech or spread to other plastic while the actual 'cancer' dot itself might not.

[hathorcat]

as this is only one pony and also the bacteria only shows on the age mark with the dark central spot not on other cancer marks.

Actually I only consider the spots with a dark center to be pony cancer. The ones without a dark center I just consider to be age spots. I guess because the cause for degradation appears to be different. In one case it's an organism, in the other it's age. I agree that more research should be done to confirm this, but so far I'm going with that theory

See thats interesting!...I have pretty much always grouped cancer and age spots under the same thing as they  have such a similar degradation pattern

Maybe its that the marks without the central mark are simple "breakdown" and the marks with the central dot are the same kind of "breakdown" but the breakdown on them was simply started by or has since been invaded by bacteria....?

Yep, that's what I'm thinking Maybe it seems like a picky distinction, but I think it's an important one nonetheless, especially if we find ways to prevent one or both of these things in the future. If they have different causes (and it seems they do, or at least differential outcomes), then presumably they require different things to prevent them.

Ok...spanner in works...as I am enjoying this back and forth discussion on this lol sorry!

The other option is that of course "over time" the age marks are going to darken further as the plastic breakdown becomes worse...therefore it could be that the "cancer" dots that we see are the oldest breakdown in the plastic - i.e. they have had the longest to breakdown and are this dark colour....and the other age marks that we see could with time equally have a central point which will darken [i.e. the point in the age mark where the breakdown started?]

The problem is with plastic breakdown taking years and years [decades, centuries lol] is I am not sure we ll know the answer on this one!

I have visions of pony collectors in 2112 looking back and going "sigh...idiots...clearly age marks and cancer are caused by little tiny nanobots nomming on the plastic and that those dark ages collectors from 2012 never knew about them!*

[babystarz]

as this is only one pony and also the bacteria only shows on the age mark with the dark central spot not on other cancer marks.

Actually I only consider the spots with a dark center to be pony cancer. The ones without a dark center I just consider to be age spots. I guess because the cause for degradation appears to be different. In one case it's an organism, in the other it's age. I agree that more research should be done to confirm this, but so far I'm going with that theory

See thats interesting!...I have pretty much always grouped cancer and age spots under the same thing as they  have such a similar degradation pattern

Maybe its that the marks without the central mark are simple "breakdown" and the marks with the central dot are the same kind of "breakdown" but the breakdown on them was simply started by or has since been invaded by bacteria....?

Yep, that's what I'm thinking Maybe it seems like a picky distinction, but I think it's an important one nonetheless, especially if we find ways to prevent one or both of these things in the future. If they have different causes (and it seems they do, or at least differential outcomes), then presumably they require different things to prevent them.

Ok...spanner in works...as I am enjoying this back and forth discussion on this lol sorry!

The other option is that of course "over time" the age marks are going to darken further as the plastic breakdown becomes worse...therefore it could be that the "cancer" dots that we see are the oldest breakdown in the plastic - i.e. they have had the longest to breakdown and are this dark colour....and the other age marks that we see could with time equally have a central point which will darken [i.e. the point in the age mark where the breakdown started?]

The problem is with plastic breakdown taking years and years [decades, centuries lol] is I am not sure we ll know the answer on this one!

I have visions of pony collectors in 2112 looking back and going "sigh...idiots...clearly age marks and cancer are caused by little tiny nanobots nomming on the plastic and that those dark ages collectors from 2012 never knew about them!*

LOL! Those pesky nanobots I think you're right, it will take us a long time to figure this out because we need data over time. But I hope that any investigating we do will be helpful to people in a few years/decades. And I think this stuff is hard to look into, because when do we notice these spots? When they're big enough to notice Which could have taken years to develop from a tiny speck in a pore of the vinyl into a very visible spot. Ideally everyone would do a complete inventory of spots (like those mole checks at Dr. offices) of their collections once a year, but.. yeah, not happening

[TheBeatlesPkmnFan42]

I don't think it can spread. I have a Skydancer with cancer, and she's right next to my other G1s. She only has 1 or 2 spots. Blackcurtains did discover it was bacteria though, but since the ponies are about 20 years old, the bacteria is dead,  and thus can't spread. If it's new cancer, maybe it would. I'm no expert in these pony problems.