Blue Silica Gel

[panthers1day]

Stay away from the Blue Silica Gel as this contains a chemical additive called Cobalt Chloride which is NOT something you want near your products/food! It is linked to cause cancer and the British Chemical Regulations actually requires BLUE Silica Gel to be disposed of as Hazardous Waste!! Now the Clear/White Silica gel is like all Natural and has no checmical additives. This is the item that you see with 99% of your food packaging, etc. Just want to make sure everyone knows NOT to use the BLUE or NOT to buy the BLUE Silica Gel. The clear silica gel stuff is actually much cheaper then the blue and can be easily found online, just google Silica Gel Packets and will find several online retailers. Place I use is:

they ship for free. Hopefully this will help solve some answers about Silica Gel as well!

[The Nomad]

excerpt from

Carcinogenicity

Animal studies suggest cobalt and its compounds are carcinogenic. While several studies have shown that hard metal workers exhibit excess lung cancer mortality, there is inadequate evidence for cobalt or its compounds to be classed as carcinogenic in man (IARC, 1991). Assessment of human cancer risk is often confounded by simultaneous

tobacco consumption, exposure to nickel and arsenic and small study population numbers (Mur et al, 1987; Jensen and Tüchsen, 1990).

Mur et al (1987) observed excess lung cancer mortality (standardized mortality ratio = 4.66) in 1143 workers employed between 1950 and 1980 in a cobalt and sodium producing plant; smoking habits in the study population were not assessed. A follow-up study from 1981-88 failed to show a relationship between lung cancer and cobalt exposure (Moulin et al, 1993).

Lasfargues et al (1994) reported significantly higher lung cancer mortality among 709 hard metal workers (employed for at least one year) compared to controls, though the study was too small to be conclusive.

So probably NOT!

[NOSPAMnet]

I can't think of any food that I have bought that has included Silica Gel in it's packaging ...Plenty of other things but not food .

[Andy Dingley]

I recommend avoiding the Brown Acid too, but it may be too late in your case.

I'm OK, my silica gel is all pink, so it must be safe.

[Rod]

Interesting trying to live without vitamin B12/cobalamin. E.g. C63H88CoN14O14P - note the 'Co' in there!

(Mind, there are suggestions that excess B12 might sometimes be implciated in some forms of cancer. Seems that because it is necessary fo rcell division it is being suggested that an excess causes exscess cell division.)

(Even more OT - were Deltics exceptionally carcinogenic?)

[Derek]

Yet more still. Was "The Atom Bomb" exceptionally carcinogenic.

< Dr strangelove & all that >

Derek

[Mary Fisher]

:-)

Must've got damp!

Mary

[Rod]

In the US they do have that group of people known as "downwinders" - who were affected by fallout from tests. The rates of thyroid cancer seem to be somewhat elevated.

[Derek]

Absolutely ...

And similar from the "Downwinders" from the Windscale accident.

It was the ficticious "Cobalt Thorium G" in Strangelove that drew my attention.

There is good science and there is junk science, and there is good science that *they* never intended us to get to hear about.

Ironically it is that that breads the "Junk Science".

Derek

[Spamlet]

Cobalt chloride used to be one of the handful of chemicals that were 'safe' enough to be standard parts of kids' chemistry sets. I went through quite a few tubes of it - esp as it was one of the more spectacular ones to make 'crystal gardens' with when dropped into 'water glass' sodium silicate solution (then still available as an egg preservative).

Mind you, they also gave us Iron Sulphide for making 'bad egg gas' - which is now 'as deadly as cyanide' - but seems to come out of the back of not a few 'environmentally friendly' cars...

Another favourite seaside souvenir/kids item in those days was 'weather forecasting cards' and even plaster models, painted with cobalt chloride - blue when 'dry' pink when 'wet'.

Hence the blue crystals that used to be in computer rooms' double glazed windows, and in the bottom of desiccators mixed with the silica gel, to tell you that you had an air leak when they went pink.

We're all doomed!

S

[Andy Dingley]

What do you mean "Seem to be" ? St George is a cancer ward

[Rod]

Where did St George come from? I am confused!!!

[Andy Dingley]

Nearest town to the surface tests and nuked until it glowed.

part is that it's now in the top handful of fastest growing towns in the USA.

[Rod]

Ah - right, not familiar with place name. The way I got to know anything was through a personal contact, but he is in Boston area now.