primalmommy on mon 14 nov 05
Nobody will ever prove that anything is directly linked to anything.
Science by its very nature has been unable to prove sufficiently that
cigarette smoking causes cancer, though most of the humans on the planet
see a link. (Don't start, Phil.) Science is a process of questioning,
not an answer machine.
A friend's son almost died from e.coli, lost the lining of his digestive
system and will never be able to eat stuff he used to enjoy. How did he
get it? Nobody knows, because he's in the world. He petted animals and
ate hotdogs at a fair, went to the local cheap chinese buffet and had
oysters, swam in Lake Erie. Nobody will ever know.
I won't go into my full scale rant, but it's like the
dust-studio-chemical-glaze-safety conversation. If the result of
drinking lemonade from a lead glazed cup was instant death, or if a
person stopped breathing after the first bong hit or burst dramatically
into flames after exposure to manganese laden kiln fumes, we could make
a cause and effect connection. Like the cave man watching his friends
make bad choices all around him. "Note to self... don't eat the white
berries. Avoid that snake with the rattles. Never try to make friends
with a saber tooth tiger."
But it's not that at all, is it? It can take 30 years after asbestos
exposure to show the effects. Manganese induced Parkinsons -- years of
gradual exposure. Lead? Some kids never show symptoms, just sacrifice a
handful of IQ points.
Why infertility, asthma, birth defects, alzheimers, cancers, liver
trouble, shaky hands? You will never be able to trace it back to one
moment, one x-ray, one exposure.
People spend three days barfing and running for the bathroom and call it
'the flu", but influenza is not gastrointestinal. A lot of times it's
food poisoning or another kind of virus. We just never learn where it
came from. Wooden cutting boards with old raw chicken juice.. no thanks.
My dad takes his old crackled platter out to the grill with raw chicken
on it, and mom chases him out there to wash it before he piles the
cooked chicken right back on. Would it make us sick? Probably not. Will
I risk giving a little kid salmonella based on probably not? Probably
not.
Yeah, yeah, in the old days they used to do it this way and that way,
and their immune systems could handle it. Walk through an old cemetary
and see how long they lived in the old days. (Not very.) They also
weren't eating factory farmed meat raised on antibiotic laced food,
breeding super-cooties.
I am not as squeamish as some are about germy things. (Hi, Lili! Love
ya!) I have killed and cleaned, plucked and cooked my own chickens, and
if all goes well this week, will render a whole deer into
freezer-wrapped packages on a tarp in my kitchen. So I am not an
alarmist. But I have seen people buying crackled (unlabeled) raku vases
and pitchers, or cups glazed with green-black-matt-copper laden glazes
on the inside, and I bet they don't buy much pottery after they see how
THAT works out.
If your pots craze on purpose, groovy. If they craze just enough that
your "cone 04-10 wide range" clay body seeps water out of the bottom of
the vase and ruins the dining room table -- well, you just lost ME a
sale in the future.
Potters need to master the craft and make things happen because they are
intended, not because they don't know any better. And until they do, I
would hope they would not sell their work to the public. It does us all
a disservice.
Yours
Kelly in Ohio
giving my computer screen the no-nonsense mommy eyeball as I hit send.
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Linda Ferzoco on tue 15 nov 05
Kelly speaks sense, as usual.
I want to say one thing, maybe more, from my 22 years in the biotech pharmaceutical industry. I am not a physician or microbiologist. What I'm about to say comes from my experience in quality assuarance in biotech.
IF pathogenic human bacteria get into the cracks of a ceramic vessel in great enough quantity, and especially if the bacteria are spore-forming, there is a great chance that they will survive the trip through the best dishwasher you've got.
That HAS been proved in the laboratory, where such organisims, or their spores, have been demonstrated to survive 20 minutes in a steam autoclave at 121 deg. C.! They are amazing little critters. Every biotech company which prepares pharmaceuticals in huge, 10,000 liter tanks, has learned this lesson the hard way. This is why we must clean rigourously before sterilizing.
So, why don't we all get sick more often? My understanding leads to the following:
1. We don't usually have such bacteria around the house, mostly due to our daily sanitation practices. Certainly many of our ancestors succumbed to such illnesses, but we know better now.
2. Even if we do have, say, salmonella in our environment, it has to be present in great enough numbers to do harm. Bless our immune systems. Of course, that threshold number varies by person (babies vs. adults, well vs. ill, etc.)
So, there is a risk of transmitting illness via cracks in ceramic ware, but it's not that great in the average situation.
And I love having my cup of Peet's Major Dickason coffee in the morning in my huge Gary Holt cup that has a wonderful shino glaze with crazing.
Sign me healthy,
Linda
California
primalmommy wrote: Nobody will ever prove that anything is directly linked to anything.
Science by its very nature has been unable to prove sufficiently that
cigarette smoking causes cancer, though most of the humans on the planet
see a link. (Don't start, Phil.) Science is a process of questioning,
not an answer machine.
A friend's son almost died from e.coli, lost the lining of his digestive
system and will never be able to eat stuff he used to enjoy. How did he
get it? Nobody knows, because he's in the world. He petted animals and
ate hotdogs at a fair, went to the local cheap chinese buffet and had
oysters, swam in Lake Erie. Nobody will ever know.
I won't go into my full scale rant, but it's like the
dust-studio-chemical-glaze-safety conversation. If the result of
drinking lemonade from a lead glazed cup was instant death, or if a
person stopped breathing after the first bong hit or burst dramatically
into flames after exposure to manganese laden kiln fumes, we could make
a cause and effect connection. Like the cave man watching his friends
make bad choices all around him. "Note to self... don't eat the white
berries. Avoid that snake with the rattles. Never try to make friends
with a saber tooth tiger."
But it's not that at all, is it? It can take 30 years after asbestos
exposure to show the effects. Manganese induced Parkinsons -- years of
gradual exposure. Lead? Some kids never show symptoms, just sacrifice a
handful of IQ points.
Why infertility, asthma, birth defects, alzheimers, cancers, liver
trouble, shaky hands? You will never be able to trace it back to one
moment, one x-ray, one exposure.
People spend three days barfing and running for the bathroom and call it
'the flu", but influenza is not gastrointestinal. A lot of times it's
food poisoning or another kind of virus. We just never learn where it
came from. Wooden cutting boards with old raw chicken juice.. no thanks.
My dad takes his old crackled platter out to the grill with raw chicken
on it, and mom chases him out there to wash it before he piles the
cooked chicken right back on. Would it make us sick? Probably not. Will
I risk giving a little kid salmonella based on probably not? Probably
not.
Yeah, yeah, in the old days they used to do it this way and that way,
and their immune systems could handle it. Walk through an old cemetary
and see how long they lived in the old days. (Not very.) They also
weren't eating factory farmed meat raised on antibiotic laced food,
breeding super-cooties.
I am not as squeamish as some are about germy things. (Hi, Lili! Love
ya!) I have killed and cleaned, plucked and cooked my own chickens, and
if all goes well this week, will render a whole deer into
freezer-wrapped packages on a tarp in my kitchen. So I am not an
alarmist. But I have seen people buying crackled (unlabeled) raku vases
and pitchers, or cups glazed with green-black-matt-copper laden glazes
on the inside, and I bet they don't buy much pottery after they see how
THAT works out.
If your pots craze on purpose, groovy. If they craze just enough that
your "cone 04-10 wide range" clay body seeps water out of the bottom of
the vase and ruins the dining room table -- well, you just lost ME a
sale in the future.
Potters need to master the craft and make things happen because they are
intended, not because they don't know any better. And until they do, I
would hope they would not sell their work to the public. It does us all
a disservice.
Yours
Kelly in Ohio
giving my computer screen the no-nonsense mommy eyeball as I hit send.
_______________________________________________________________
Get the FREE email that has everyone talking at http://www.mail2world.com
Unlimited Email Storage – POP3 – Calendar – SMS – Translator – Much More!
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