Sausage and dichromate

When following a thread through the archives last week, I came across
a statement, intended to reassure someone who was concerned about
safety and dichromates, to the effect that at one time, dichromate
was used as an ingredient in sausage. This is one of those things
that's somewhat true but not exactly true.

John told us some time ago that during one period, sausage casings
were glued together at the seams by treating the seams with
dichromated glue and irradiating them, creating a bond that would
hold the casing together while the sausage was boiled. I was
intrigued by that information and found that, indeed, I could bind
two sheets of Japanese tissue paper (thin but very strong) together
very tightly by treating both edges with dichromated gum, overlapping
the edges, and exposing through the overlapped edge. The crosslinked
bond was so tight that when I pulled hard on the papers on each side
to try to pull the papers apart at the seam, the tissue tore but the
bond held tight.

The point here is that the dichromate was in the casing, not in the
sausage, and only at the seam. I don't know if they rinsed the
remaining active dichromate out after using it to glue the casings
together and before filling the casings with sausage, but one would
sort of assume they would. At any rate, it's not quite the same as
putting dichromate into the sausage as an ingredient.
Katharine
Received on Sun Mar 12 11:29:45 2006