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Re: toxicity of kitchen utensils



At 02:25 PM 2/19/01 -0800, Leigh Palmer wrote:
Copper is toxic

At 10:52 AM -0500 2/20/01, Chuck Britton wrote:
When I stick my little flashlight down the snout of the kettle, the
bottom sure LOOKS to be copper as opposed to stainless.

At 09:35 AM 2/20/01 -0800, Leigh Palmer wrote:

I can't say that it isn't, but I wouldn't want to use the kettle if
it is. See http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/section1/chapter4/4j.htm.
(I found this by typing "copper toxicity"


Hmmmmmm. It seems like quite a stretch to use that site to support the
general notion that "copper is toxic" or to support deprecation of copper
utensils.

What it actually says begins as follows:
Copper (Cu) is a heavy metal whose unbound ions are toxic. Almost all of
the copper in the body is present as a component of copper proteins,
thereby reducing the in vivo concentration of unbound copper ions almost
to zero. Genetic mechanisms control the processes by which copper is
incorporated into apoproteins and those by which toxic accumulations of
copper are avoided.

Almost every daily diet contains 2 to 3 mg of copper, only about half of
which is absorbed. Any copper absorbed in excess of metabolic
requirements is excreted through the bile, probably via hepatic
lysosomes. On average, an adult has about 150 mg of copper in the body,
of which about 10 to 20 mg is in the liver. The remainder is distributed
ubiquitously.

I find the objection to copper teakettles to be implausible and unsupported
by the data so far provided.

Personally, I would worry about the chromium in stainless utensils before I
started worrying about copper.