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Posted by D. Sherman on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 12:02:30 :
In Reply to: Yah do not use stainless because posted by wet coast Bruce on Monday, May 05, 2008 at 10:05:44 :
With all due respect, I don't believe you unless you can tell me what this "tiny toxic component" is, that supposedly been removed from all new stainless (and yet is not present in other steel), and how it can get in the water when used as an anode in a weak alkali solution. There is a lot of superstition that gets circulated around about a lot of things, and one of the most popular subjects is "toxins". I'm especially dubious of stories that claim something is highly toxic without even stating what that "something" is.
In the case of stainless steels, which are alloys of iron, nickel, and chromium, assuming what you heard is true, the "element" that was removed must be some contaminant, not one of these main ingredients, because the main ingredients can't be removed without totally changing the alloy into something entirely different and probably unusable. If it's true that this deadly substance was only recently removed, then all the cookware, restaurant equipment, food processing factory equipment, and so on, built with stainless steels over the past 50 years must be contaminated with this poison. If the poison can leach into a weak alkaline de-rusting bath from the anode (the electrode that collects stuff), then surely it would leach into food products, some of which are quite acidic (acids tend to dissolve metals), and yet I've never heard of any recall of stainless steel cookware, or any requirement that food processing plants replace all their vats and plumbing.
If I told you I was doing chrome plating and was dumping buckets of chromic acid and potassium dichromate down the drain or into the creek, you'd be right to say I was endangering myself and the environment, but this mystery substance that supposedly dissolves in weak alkali, is toxic at parts per trillion, and has been removed from new stainless? I don't believe it. Besides, no contaminants in the metal manufacturing industries are removed down to the parts per million level, much less the parts per trillion (million million) level. Unwanted elements are rarely guaranteed to be below .01% (10,000 parts per million). The only substance made with less than parts per trillion of contaminants is semiconductor-grade silicon, which the purest element on earth.
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