In a message dated 10/20/2001 12:23:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
> Subj:CS>RE: Stainless dangerous? > Date:10/20/2001 12:23:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time > From: [email protected] (Kevin Nolan) > Reply-to: <A HREF="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</A> > To: [email protected] > > > > > In Digest #951, James-Osbourne: Holmes wrote: > "I use stainless cookware, and do all of my cooking with the same distilled > water with which I make silver. I think it depends on a whole bunch of > factors. I doubt very much if the leaching in practice is of any > consequence whatsoever. "Copper is another story. DW dissolves it quite > rapidly; such that you cannot use ordinary copper water tube for DW > distribution. It will both perforate quickly---exactly how fast I don’t > know—and put a lot of copper in the water. I suspect--but do not > know---that it will put a potentially toxic amount of Cu into the water, > depending on how much you drink. If one had a sensitive scale, you could > put a chunk into DW and weigh it after it had been in there a while, > constantly changing the water so that the dissolved copper would not slow > down the process. The “Waterwise” still manufacturer may offer solid > information about the various grades of SS. This would still not duplicate > the process of running continuously fresh DW through a pipe." > Some worthwhile advice there, James. Reminds me of a story run a few months > back on TV here in Oz, about the huge cost of corrosion in copper water > pipe. It's locale dependent but occurs all over the world. Apparently > no-one has an answer as to why it happens or how to cure it (apart from > replacing the pipe). Interestingly, there seemed to be a correlation > between higher levels of dissolved iron picked up from ground water, and > copper corrosion levels > > JOH: The interesting thing here is that a copper pipe (which I'll assume is 99.9+% copper) should NOT dissolve in DW because (unlike zinc, for example), it is less reactive than hydrogen. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps there is another, even more noble, metal in the vicinity so that a corrosion cell is set up. What relatively common metal is more noble than copper? Beats me. Roger
