Fabienne Micheline Cassman on mon 2 apr 01
Greetings,
I attended John Hesselberth's lecture on this very subject at NCECA. Louis
Katz opened the lecture with a statement on the following lines: Imagine
unfolding your newspaper and seeing the following headlines: Child dies
from copper poisoning bought from local potter. From that moment, sales
will plummet. If that didn't get crowd's attention, I don't know what
would have.
I heard different opinions / statements after the lecture which raise
questions which I thought I'd share. Feel free to fill in the blanks :)
What is the magic number when the level of accumulation of each different
colorant in the bloodstream becomes fatal?
Which colorants are cumulative which are not, ie flushed by our system? If
flushed, how long does it take to flush how much?
What kind of abuse could the glaze take and how much would have to be
ingested before it reaches the fatal level? E.g. store OJ for 10 nights
and drink the whole jug?
I realize that it will depend on the glaze... the tests results for
leaching are given in mg/l How do I read this, mg/l achieve over 10, 20,
30 minutes? Or would it take a month to get there?
Any other elements which are not colorants that can be considered just as
bad? Lead wasn't bad, neither were cigarettes; who says strontium will not
turn up to be just as nasty in 20 years; I've seen glazes calling for 20
parts of it! Where does paranoia start and common sense stop?
Right now I am turning the following in my head:
If I made functional ware, which I don't, I wouldn't want my ware to
discolor. What if the buyer serves fish with wedges of lemon and leaves it
on the plate overnight before tossing it in the dishwasher. I would make
me want to make the ware "fade" resistant so I don't have to be replacing
it every other day. That alone should get levels down if it was necessary
in the first place, but that's up to the answers I seek to tell and I can
see the difficulty in answering them as there are many factors
involved. So what's reasonable here?
A note: I have seen some ware puts a warning label not to store food
overnight. Then I have seen others put labels of food safe on ware I could
have just drop dead by looking at it. So even if we label these things,
trust seems to be an issue.
Thank you,
Fabienne
--
Milky Way Ceramics http://www.milkywayceramics.com/
Yes, I have learned from my mistakes...
I can reproduce them exactly.
Gail Dapogny on tue 3 apr 01
I agree that all of these are relevant and interesting questions indeed.
However, I also have this uneasy sense that we potters are going to fish
around for the place/situation where we can make ware glazed with certain
formulas that allow us not to feel too guilty. In other words, some of us
are going to rationalize everything that doesn't out and out leave a fade
mark on the plate.
In my opinion that fade mark is the smoke that signifies fire. This all
reminds me of the cigarette companies for years glossing over everything
(those b-------!), and everybody who wanted to believe them reasoning that
if research came up with ten packs hurting or killing Mouse X, then we
surely don't have to worry about 2 or 3 packs. People seemed to go to
almost any lengths to convince themselves that cigarettes were safe, and
the cigarette companies -- as long as the evidence remained a little
fuzzy-- were not going to tell them otherwise. Let's please not fall into
that all-too-human trap.
Are we going to label our functional ware: "Okay for most foods, but keep
it away from orange juice, lemons, tomatoes, and coffee." ??
----Gail
>From Fabienne--
>I attended John Hesselberth's lecture on this very subject at NCECA. ...
>What kind of abuse could the glaze take and how much would have to be
>ingested before it reaches the fatal level? E.g. store OJ for 10 nights
>and drink the whole jug?
>...
>I realize that it will depend on the glaze... the tests results for
>leaching are given in mg/l How do I read this, mg/l achieve over 10, 20,
>30 minutes? Or would it take a month to get there?
>...
>Any other elements which are not colorants that can be considered just as
>bad? Lead wasn't bad, neither were cigarettes; who says strontium will not
>turn up to be just as nasty in 20 years; I've seen glazes calling for 20
>parts of it! Where does paranoia start and common sense stop?
>...
>If I made functional ware, which I don't, I wouldn't want my ware to
>discolor. What if the buyer serves fish with wedges of lemon and leaves it
>on the plate overnight before tossing it in the dishwasher. I would make
>me want to make the ware "fade" resistant so I don't have to be replacing
>it every other day. That alone should get levels down if it was necessary
>in the first place, but that's up to the answers I seek to tell and I can
>see the difficulty in answering them as there are many factors
>involved. So what's reasonable here?
Gail Dapogny
1154 Olden Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48103-3005
(734) 665-9816
gdapogny@umich.edu
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