ANOTHER DAY, another set of recalls from cpsc.gov – the US governmental agency that faced with the recall of exploding Dell notebooks issued a warning after the fact.
The odd thing is – and we monitor these recalls every day – is that today’s recall is to do with “fake teeth due to violation of lead paint standard”. Almost every recall is to do with lead, or lead paint. Lead is dangerous for kiddies.
It is true to say that when I was a kiddie in Aberdeen in the 1950s, my daddy said to me, don’t drink the water until you’ve let the water run a while, because we have lead pipes and we’ve been on holiday for several weeks.
The second CSPSC recall is that Michaels Stores has recalled its seasonal writing pens due to the violation of the US lead paint standard.
Lead is a wonderful element, Pb in the periodic table. When it oxidises it definitely looks dull and grey. But when you scrape the lead oxide off, it looks like a shiny metal. Anyone who has ever used a soldering iron knows this. In the periodic table, lead (plumbum), silver (argentum) and gold are in the same class, so to speak. Gold extraction, however, normally needed cyanide to extract it. Inorganic and organic chemistry – the perfect mystery for every chemist.
It was this picture on the INQ that first galvanised us – yeah I do know the difference between the elements – to the 21st century dangers of lead. For young kiddies, inhaling stuff like this is positively bad. It is elementary chemistry. ♣
