Thursday, March 08, 2007
Tasty lead solder...
Today in my 'food preservation' subject I learned that the last lead-soldering operation for canned food in Australia only closed down around 5 months ago, and only then because the equipment was so old the company pretty much had to scrap it.
Of course, selling tins of food soldered with lead is illegal in Australia, and has been for a long, long time.
It's ok though, because the company was selling it to Papua New Guinea, and it's not illegal there.
I wonder if Australia doesn't mind selling them asbestos sheeting or lead-based paint for houses, either?
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4 comments:
Scandalous.
Even the lecturer said he was surprised to learn that fact only recently... it's pretty nasty.
WHAT THE!? Surely this is not true! Any references?
No, he wouldn't name the company... the company that was doing the canning was not the company that was selling the lead-soldered tins, though. It was contracted- most of its operations consisted of normal canning, but the one client who contracted them to can meat for sale in PNG refused to wear the slight increase in cost that would have accompanied replacement of the machine, so they just kept using the old one...
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