Should I Be Worried About Lead?

Nichole M

Member
I've been using cast iron for a year now and never heard of the lead melted in cast iron pans issue until this week. Now I'm concerned. Are there signs to look out for? Or do they all look innocent? I think I can get test kits at the store but should I test all my CI? Expensive...and many have been in a lye bath together, does that spread contamination? Thanks.
 
I don't think the lead issue is as bad as a lot of people seem to think. I've seen some forums where if someone posts a picture of a cast iron pan someone seems to chime in with the the old 'better test it for lead' comment. I can't really imagine anyone using anything bigger than a #5 for melting lead... maybe a #3... how much lead do you need for fishing weights or muzzle loader balls anyway? Also, I can't imagine one that has been used for melting lead accidentally being mixed in with ones that people actually cook in very frequently... if you melted lead in one... you're going to be sure to keep that in the workshop and away from the kitchen.
 
I've been using cast iron for a year now and never heard of the lead melted in cast iron pans issue until this week.

Did you just start looking at the Reddit Cast Iron forums this week? I swear every before / after post someone in thread chimes in saying " I hope you tested for lead".

I'm honestly not sure how big of a concern it is, but the fear seems to be perpetuated on the subreddit.
 
Did you just start looking at the Reddit Cast Iron forums this week? I swear every before / after post someone in thread chimes in saying " I hope you tested for lead".

I'm honestly not sure how big of a concern it is, but the fear seems to be perpetuated on the subreddit.

that and ones who always seem to show up just to say 'just throw it in the self cleaning oven, I always do that and it works awesome.'... or 'throw it in the coals of a fire, that's the way the cowboys did it in the old days.' and they'll defend 'their' method is safe and foolproof for days...
 
SCO works fine for me, but I'm not going to defend it. 'Course, a dip in the lye bath followed by a dip in the e-tank (or not) works well, too, but I'm not gonna defend them, either. I've used them all.
 
Nichole, to be absolutely sure the pan is "safe" do test for lead. However, I second Doug's comment that smaller pans would be most likely to have been used for lead melting. The small ladle looking things would cause me to be suspicious--I think they were made for such uses in the first place. Also, it seems to me that lead in a piece of CI would show up as silvery residue--am I off the wall here? Any comments from folks who have seen pans which were for sure used for melting softer metals would be educational.
 
yeah the little flat bottom ladle things with a pour spout were made for and used for wax, paraffin and sometimes lead... so I would definitely check those (not sure I would ever have a use for one of those with food anyway). To Sharon's second question... not necessarily. obviously the lead has a much lower melting point than iron... that's the reason people melt lead 'in' iron... and if you are pouring into a mold you want the lead to be as liquid as possible to get to pour well... and you can just keep heating the container to keep it hot enough to do that, so you wouldn't necessarily have any obvious lead left... and if there was any, lead oxidizes and might leave a powdery residue which could be wiped off... so again, not much of anything visible left behind. and if there was any lead residue it could have been covered with seasoning... and again, not visible. Lead is a possibility and something to be concerned about... but do I test every pan that I strip? no.
 
I also think that the smaller ones would be more likely to be used to smelt lead. This one I picked up a while back, it was rusted and had crusty covered sawdust/dirt in it. The guy at the flea market said he picked it up out of state with some other stuff, and He didn't know anything about the history of it.

It's a later BSR #5 century. (No great loss if past lead use) After I got it cleaned up I noticed groves cut on one side of the handle and not the other. Kinda like it was done with a Rat tail file as a way to mark it for personal identification for some reason? This gave me mental red flag about using it. I have not checked it yet for lead. But this one I will for my own piece of mind.
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Hard to tell for sure from the pic but the striations on both sides look similar enough to have been done by the same grinder. I'd suspect a foundry worker saw something undesirable on the other side of the handle and did a quick pass through the grinder to get it off.
 
When I buy a piece of cast iron, I never know the history. So I clean them to bare metal and season them and cease to worry about them.

There are people who go to tire dealerships and take home 5 gallon buckets of lead weights for free. A five gallon bucket of lead weighs a lot. The lead is full of road crud. Some people make sinkers with these and others reload ammunition. If you set up to melt a 5 gallon bucket of lead, you want to melt as much of it as you can at one time. All the crud will float to the top and you scoop it off and pour it into smaller molds for later use.

My point is, while some people use smaller pieces for melting lead, others use larger pieces to get it all done quickly. If the possibility of lead bothers you, test for it. Personally, I just clean them and use them.

I would be interested in knowing if anyone has cleaned their cast iron and checked them positive for lead after words.
 
Dave, I have a #3 that tested positive for lead after it sat in my lye bucket for a week. It was a heavily crusted pan with wide pour spouts. I had high hopes of what I might find underneath the crud! When I took it out and scrubbed it, it still had some weird,metallic looking spots on the cooking surface. So, for the first time ever, I bought a kit and tested it. Sure enough, it tested positive. On the bright side, even though it had wide pour spouts and had a "this is going to be a good one" feel to it ... I'm pretty sure it could be, might be, at least has a chance of being, an Asian made knockoff. Still, if it had not tested positive, I might be using it. It's a nice lightweight pan. Has a nice feel to it.
 
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