galvanized anything will kill you!

mattd2 said:

Huh? I don't get it? Was this whole thread a joke?

You came in here screaming "anything galvanised will kill you!" and


but now claim you were not overreacting?

in reality, the use of zinc/glavanised wire is not going to cause any harm. It is not the best pratice, but it is not going to kill anyone either.

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Flboy said:

To mattd2
My freakin browser didn't show your entire post,, sorry, I took you out of context! I apologize! Now back to that brew!

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smyrnaquince said:

Personally, I read the title of this thread more as a warning that galvanized materials contacting your wort is not good for you.

Will galvanized materials contacting acidic, hot wort kill you? Probably not.

Will there be effects on your health, your brain cells, the functioning of your organs? I don't know. There is probably no way for any of us to tell if there would be damage and if so, how much.

I have a friend who sniffed glue in high school. He seems fine, but I have no idea how he would have turned out if he had not sniffed glue. If someone drank water from a galvanized bucket their whole life, there is no way to know how their health or body functions might be different if they had not. (And water is usually near neutral in pH, not acidic like beer.)

Unless someone wants to have a chemical analysis of a "galvanized surface" beer performed and see how much zinc has ended up in the final product, then compare it to what levels are considered safe (or even beneficial), we are all talking opinion and anecdotes.

Is it easy to avoid having your wort contact galvanized surfaces? Yes.

Why play around with unknowns if it is easy to avoid galvanized materials that contact wort?

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Flboy said:

Will I do it again? Yep!

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troy2000 said:

...OMG everything you eat, drink or even touch is going to KILL you!!! ...

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Flboy said:

Not what I said, to go back to my original post, yes, galvanized anything in contact with your brew is bad, for several reasons. I have updated a few posts on builds using zinc and got no reaction. So.. Forced the issue to draw attention to something that has very debatable health issues. -not drinking beer, digesting zinc unnecessarily.-. Is zinc an important supplement? Yes.
My second post was a thank you for those of you that understood my point, and didn't hang me out to dry. If you thought I was saying I was not overreacting, then maybe we both need to grab a brew. You buy!

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troy2000 said:

My Chinese knock-off of a Corona mill looks like it's been sprayed with zinc paint. None of it's rubbed off yet, and I won't be worried if it does.

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jbaysurfer said:

While I agree that OP probably went a little overboard, I just want to say that I'm judging the Sacramento region NHC this year, and I honestly hope and pray that I'm not drinking beer made by someone who wouldn't be concerned with zinc paint flakes getting into their grist. That's an alarming attitude IMHO.

Maybe you're just trying to make a point though...but please exercise great care in your beer if you're sharing it with others. Brew on. ;-)

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troy2000 said:

"Hope and pray?" Methinks you're over-dramatizing.

The paint (if that's what it is) is hardly thick enough to 'flake.'; It would have to wear off - and as I said, it hasn't done so yet.

Since I've shoved about forty pounds of grain through it and there are no bare or even scuffed spots in the coating, I seriously doubt I'm getting enough zinc in a 5 gal batch to measure, even with precision instruments. But if you're worried, give us a list of the competitions you'll be judging, and I'll skip entering them.

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seabass07 said:

OP is an idiot. Clearly.

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jbaysurfer said:

I said exactly which competition. Then I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I'm glad you haven't seen any flakes go into your grain, but I stand by my original post on the subject.

That's ^ about as undramatic as I can conjure fwiw.

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Flboy said:

Ouch!
Anyways. Just edited my original post:

(update) yes, overreaction and wrong on several points. My kid is a Vet tech and their shop specializes in bird care. Almost every week a bird comes in too sick to save. From toys and cages using galvanized parts. My daughter just lovingly pointed out to me, we are not birds!

FYI, there is a difference between idiot and stupidity. I deny claim to the idiot status.

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Epimetheus said:

Please, before posting the typical alarmist, unsubstantiated anecdote, take a few minutes to search the interwebs and post some supporting links?

Galvanized anything - pah! Probably the most common way to die from galvanized pipe is to get hit with one. The post #14 by troy2000 nailed it. and it took me all of 5 minutes to search and independently find that and lots of other information. Beaucoup. Try it.

Goes along with alzheimers from aluminum kettles, lotsa lead leaching from brass fittings, dangers of lead-free solder that has tiny amounts of lead in it (yeah, it does have teensy amounts of lead) , and on and on.

By the time I drink enough beer for the metal to get me, I will have cirrhosis of the liver. Prost!

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troy2000 said:

Speaking of alarmists: a few years ago I read a piece by a professional food writer, in which she told her readers, "never, ever, ever cook stuffing inside a turkey." Hello? Why does she think it's called stuffing?

Her starting point was sound: the stuffing soaks up juices from the raw turkey, and if it's undercooked it you can get salmonella poisoning. But then she got irrational and alarmist. The sensible conclusion would have been, "So make sure your stuffing is done through and through; maybe stick a thermometer in it." But maybe she thinks we're all to stupid to do that....

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mattd2 said:

So I was thinking about this a bit more and really wanted to check the validity of the claim.

<analysis deleted in the interest of saving space>

I think we can say Zinc electroplated fender washers will not cause any adverse helath effect before your liver shuts down from alcohol abuse

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chickens4life said:

This is an article about using yeast to remove heavy metals from solution (the are using relatively short contact times and not growing yeast in the solution). they find that for some metals including zinc dead yeast works even better than live cells (under there conditions).
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2009.04170.x/pdf

here is one study testing content of heavy metals at different stages of the brewing process (the metals they are looking at are the ones introduced from pesticides on the malt and hops, but the same would hold true for metals introduced in the mashtun). they are finding a majority of the metals actually coming out in the spent grain, then a majority of the remaining metals being absorbed by the yeast (for lead cadmium and selenium).
http://tchie.uni.opole.pl/freeECE/S_18_1/Cejka_18(S1).pdf

you can find more on the interwebs easily, but most of them wont be about beer specifically; they will instead be about using yeast for bioremediation.

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smcinco said:

Zinc? That's child's play. What about dihydrogen monoxide?!? The levels in beer are shocking! Ban dihydrogen monoxide!

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

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newbrewerkaf said:

Hey idea! Dihydrogen monoxide is deadly, only one safe way to reduce it in beer is distillation, maybe the epa could overturn the century plus oppression of this "safety measure" ...

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