Lead Dining

At this point I am not sure I want to know what is in my food, home, clothes and things I use any more. Who do you trust. Do you trust the Major chains or the small local stores? If China is the main or at least current source of the lead problem why is not more being done to check the problem. Oh wait, I get it. WalMart wants to keep buying from them. We would not want to upset the supplier of goods for us poor folk.

So the other day I was looking around at some history of things and stopped on a couple of interesting items about lead and dining in history. In the 1500's drinking cups had lead in them. Since there was not a lot of things to do people drank ale and whiskey from these cups. This was not always a good combination apparently. When the people would drink too much the combination of lead cup and liquor would make people pass out for a couple of days. Just imagine people passed out all over the ground. Sometimes people thought they were dead. The famiies would sometimes find their loved ones and take them home. Then the family would lay them out in hopes of seeing them wake up. That might have been a little scary.

Pewter apparently was used for dishes. But again this might have been a bad combination. Some food with high acid content would make the lead leach into food. Sometimes this lead (no pun intended) to lead poisoning and death.

And to think when I was a kid most paint had lead in it. Toys had lead in them. We used to break thermometers and play with the mercury balls. Just break a thermometer now- the haz-mat crew will be there in ten minutes. I grew up in a different age. We never feared these things. Of course if I am not here tomorrow, you will know I am no longer here. The paint finally got me!