Strange fine grey powder

[Andy Dingley]

Can't identify the powder, but if my Vietnamese is up to par the text reads, "Help, I am a prisoner in a cement factory just south of Hanoi"

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember [e-mail] (D.M. Procida) saying something like:

It's probably an MIA.

[Dave Fawthrop]

|I have just opened a 1kg bag of cashew nuts, into which I shoved my paw |and withdrew a little wrap of newspaper, neatly folded, containing a |fine grey powder. | | | |The powder - I have resisted the temptation to sniff too strongly or too |taste it - is extremely soft and fine, so fine that it seems simply to |disappear into the skin. I don't recognise the writing on the newspaper. |It looks south-east Asian, but the alphabet is Roman. | |I presume the wrap was placed there as a joke by some bored production |line worker on a dismal wage. | |Any idea what the powder might be? | |For some reason I find myslf slightly unnerved by this.

Take it to your local Environmental Health Officers, but first read the ingredients list. Buy another bag and take it to them unopened. If they sell cashew nuts it is illegal to have *anything* else in the bag.

[Mike Halmarack]

I reckon the workers are tunneling their way out of the cashew factory using a piece of emery paper and secreting the spoil in bags of nuts.

3 or 4 more BOGOFs and they'll all be out by Chinese new year.

[Mary Fisher]

I read it as " ... a grey powder factory ... "

Mary

>

[Peter Parry]

If you add a drop of water to some of it and rub it between your fingers does it form a grey slightly sticky paste?

[D.M. Procida]

I don't know, unfortunately. What would that indicate?

Daniele

[Peter Parry]

Possibly that it is Fullers Earth (dried powdered clay) which is sometimes used in bags in large packages of oily nuts to absorb any oil they exude in shipping.

[Kevin Kirkpatrick]

replying to D.M. Procida, Kevin Kirkpatrick wrote: May be bentonite. A clay to absorb moisture and smells? People actually ingest this clay as health benefit. Can't recall why. The packet is to be trashed.

[PJK]

He's probably stopped worrying after 10 years

Peter.