brass ball valve cancer?

Someone welded a keggle for me. The brass ball valve can unscrew off. There is a tag on the lever that says, "This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Should I be worried at boiling temperatures?

No California is a bunch of pussies and have that warning on everything. Are you pregnant?

everything causes cancer if you are west of the sierra nevada.

I am not pregnant. Though, I always eat for two.

There's a tiny amount of lead in brass, that's probably what that tag is all about.

Read the How to Brew link above to learn how to remove the surface lead from your brass. I've done it. It's fine. Even if you don't bother, it's probably still fine. (But it's *really* easy to remove the surface lead, so go ahead and do it.)

There is a trace amount of lead in a lot of things that end up getting into your body.

Rick500 said:

There is a trace amount of lead in a lot of things that end up getting into your body.

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Especially if those 'things' were made in China...

Yeah, true... Well, be watchful of course, but what I'm saying is that just about nothing is perfectly free of stuff that can harm you in large doses.

Just rinse the valve with an acid wash, vinegar, star-san etc. It will be fine unless you decided to suddenly start eating brass valves.

Whiskey said:

Just rinse the valve with an acid wash, vinegar, star-san etc. It will be fine unless you decided to suddenly start eating brass valves.

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+1 The amounts of lead that might be in the brass have to actually get into your body. They can't migrate there through magic. I cast my own bullets for reloading for 20 years; a lot of this was in a basically poorly ventilated space. After I quit casting, I was motivated to have a test for lead levels. Guess what? Background levels, no more than might be expected in the general population.
A lot of the stuff floating around about chemicals and radiation is just the purest superstition and speculation, and the Internet just makes this grow worse, and exponentially*. You will get more radiation flying in a jet from NY -> LA than you will from working a lifetime in a nuclear power plant. (In the plane, you're flying above most of the Earth's atmosphere, and thus are exposed to a lot of radiation from space, whereas the reactor is quite well shielded.)

*Note: According to comedian Lewis Black, "Halftime at the Super Bowl is the best because halftime at the Super Bowl has gotten exponentially worse every year. I use the word 'exponentially' because I was taught it in math class and that was the first sentence I could use it in. 'Exponentially worse' means crappier and crappier and crappier."

I would guess 5 gallons of alcohol is far worse for you than the amount of lead that would come from a brass ball valve!

If you're like me and live in the DC area, you probably get 1000x more lead from your tap water than you would through that ball valve over the course of your life.

If you're using silver solder, lead should not be an issue, right?