Re: Sausage and dichromate

On Mar 12, 2006, at 9:29 AM, Katharine Thayer wrote:

> 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.

The point being that there's nothing particularly harmful in gum
arabic, either crosslinked or not crosslinked; gum arabic is used in
large quantities in all kinds of food products. And I agree in
principle with the person who made this suggestion ( I don't remember
who it was) that ingesting small amounts of dichromate probably isn't
going to hurt anyone very much. But the effect of ingested
dichromate is neither here nor there, since ingesting the dichromate
isn't the issue of concern with alt-photo printers and dichromates;
at least I doubt that many of us are snacking on the dichromate while
printing gum.

The issues of concern are breathing either powder or spray, which is
of concern mostly for industrial workers who are exposed to large
amounts of the airborne stuff, but is also a concern for applying gum
coating with an airbrush (although I agree that applying gum with a
roller hardly merits the same kind of concern) and a dermatitis that
some gum printers have developed as a result of contact with the
dichromate in the developing water, which is something to be
concerned about. I've never worn rubber gloves while gum printing and
have my hands in dichromate-laced water all the time, and (knock on
wood) haven't had a problem, but this isn't to say that I'm not
tempting fate. So whether you can safely eat dichromate isn't the
issue; the issue is whether you can safely breathe it or put your
hands in it, which is a different question.
Katharine
Received on Sun Mar 12 12:50:57 2006