On 2005-08-19, graham > wrote:
>
> "Randall Nortman" > wrote in message
> nk.net...
>> [Crossposted to rec.food.equipment and rec.food.baking; followups
>> redirected to rec.food.equipment only.]
>>
>> Yes, I've searched newsgroup archives, yes I've read all the arguments
>> that unglazed quarry tiles are safe, and yes I've been baking directly
>> on them for years and I'm still alive. But the time has come for my
>> wife and I to see if we can pass our genes on to the next generation,
>> and so we're being intentionally paranoid about food safety issues.
>
> If you are that worried, haven't you left it a bit late?

At the risk of turning this into a massively off-topic thread, I'll
take this bait. I assume you refer to the fact that most of the nasty
stuff will collect and be stored in the body over many years. Well,
it's not like my wife has been sucking on mercury thermometers for the
last decade -- of course, being a generally health-conscious person,
she's been avoiding major sources of contamination. And she's not
pregnant yet -- we're just getting prepared.

But aside from that, I'm going to assume that most stored elements are
going to stay that way though the pregnancy, for the most part, unless
she ends up having to dip into her stored fat reserves for calories or
fat-soluble vitamins. We hope to avoid that as much as possible with
proper nutrition. Any newly-ingested materials, on the other hand,
will probably end up taking a trip or two around the circulatory
system before ending up either in her tissues or the baby's.

But putting all that hand-waving aside, this is largely a
psychological matter: if anything were to actually go wrong with the
pregnancy and I had been baking on anything questionable, I would tend
to blame myself, whether that would be rational or not. This is the
principle we're applying to everything -- if we would question
ourselves about our decision in the event that something went wrong,
it's better to play it safe.

This might be an interesting debate on an appropriate newsgroup. If
you'd like to continue the discussion, I suggest you find one and set
an appropriate followup-to.

--
Randall Nortman