Today, my wife looking for fancy trim to complete a little trinket display stand we built, I looked over small, turned fancy things like finials and corner-pieces to adorn larger items. Every one had a warning sticker pasted on: "Wood dust is known to the State of California to contain materials which cause cancer or birth defects. Do not breathe wood dust." Wood dust? As in sawdust? Do carpenters have higher than expected rates of cancer? All the butcher shops in our community when I was a kid had floors coated with sawdust! Seems California is very, very concerned about it's citizens' health. After all, look at the L.A. Basin......... Frank
As I understand it, in California you have to prove that something does not cause cancer if it has ever been shown to cause cancer in animals. As you know, the dosages of things given to experimental animals is generally much higher than anything you would normally be exposed to. That is why coffee has to carry a label in California now that it is known by the State of California to cause cancer--some compound formed by the roasting process has caused cancer in some dosage in some experiment sometime in the past. I am sure, having once lived there, that the air in most of California is more carcinogenic than wood dust or coffee.
@Don Alaska Just a step further: All the utensils, implements, cookware, table "silverware", virtually all the things in our lives made of Stainless Steel contain Chromium, which is toxic. Most typically used is 18-8, 18% Chromium, not a trivial amount, and 8% Nickel, also poisonous. I should like to see every single knife, fork, spoon, anything made of SS, carrying the Prop. 65 label. 'Course, labels would fall off, so permanent etching would be necessary carry the warning. Where does it end? Like @Ken Anderson said, I suppose. Frank
Wow the things I learn on this forum.... stainless steel contains chromium which is toxic, but used in cutlery...wow!! As for the sawdust...*pah*...only if you swallowed it every day for breakfast I suspect you might get a few problems lol
The key, Frank, would be how soluble the metals are in the alloy. Chromium and Vanadium are insulin cofactors and are required for glucose metabolism (in trace amounts). Americans actually are thought to be chromium deficient. We were once sufficient, but as agriculture has become so intensive, the trace nutrients are depleted and, in most cases, not replaced. I'm sure nickel is similar. I don't know haw much of the nickel and chromium actually "wash out" of the stainless. Almost everything is toxic if the intake is large enough.
@Don Alaska Both true statements. A big factor is that the elimination of toxins by the body is highly variable, both by the material, quantity, state of general health, etc. Sort of like the contention that a given quantity of ionizing radiation absorbed by the body which would be lethal, if spread out over many years in small amounts, is harmless. Seems it ain't so. At least, that's the current thinking. I used the Chromium thing only as an example. For my part, I have no problem whatsoever using SS utensils, especially liking my big Stainless cookpot, in which I boil water, malt, and hops! Frank