How safe are plastic shoe boxes (environmental question)
lilleth
16 years ago
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cynic
16 years agolucy
16 years agoRelated Discussions
How to root cuttings questions
Comments (1)1. Above 70 degrees will root faster. I like it about 75 2. Moss should be damp not soaking wet. Squeeze out all excess water. 3. The darker the better. Until you get roots and you put it into a cup. Then you can introduce some light. 4. I'd check for sure after a couple weeks, can't hurt to air them out a bit for a few minutes every couple of days. 5.That depends. I've had them root in just a week, and others take a month or longer....See MoreFire hazards-which is worse plastic or cardboard?
Comments (11)speaking from experience and seeing what happened when we moved into my moms house after she died i would say cardboard is a definate no no. Mom had a cold celler filled from top to bottom with cardboard boxes containing fragile and antique ceramics, clothing that literally shredded as we took them out! The ceramics? we lost quite a bit of tehm do to bottoms falling out of the boxes. we had to use hazmat suits to clean the cold cellar out due to black mold that was rampant through the cardboard boxes and clothing. (clothing and cardboard are a attractant to this type of mold) Moms attic was also FULL of cardboard boxes full of iteems which stunk to high heaven due to dampness and we filled a 40 yd garbage container 4 times. We have been cleaning the house out and renovating since october and still we find issues that could have been avoided as a result of cardboard being used to store all of her 'treasures'. Luckily we are in the waste and recycling business so the garbage dumpsters are cheaper. Had mom listened to us over the years alot of the precious antiques could have been saved instead of ending up as landfill. Being the neice of a fireman and a 5 times breast cancer survivor i can tell you this: Plastic melts faster and hotter than cardboard does. BUT plastic containers are harder to ignite if stored the proper way. Cardboard will ignite extremely quickly and it only takes a spark. what does not ignite will mold. Many molds cause cancer of various types. i hope this helps...See MoreEtiquette Question re: Shoes Inside
Comments (54)My old (tired, worn) house was built in 1952. I wish I could say it's a mid-century modern gem. LOL, it's not. I have the original, 1 1/4-inch wide, hardwood (white oak) floors in the livingroom, hallway, and two original bedrooms. We refinshed the floors ourselves. They weren't perfect to begin with; they weren't perfect when they were finished, but they are beautiful, IMHO. We used a matte finish, no shine top coat. Shine/high gloss finishes shows every speck of dust and magnifies marks. I have two huge hunting dogs and a rough-and-tumble DH that live here. The floors are not pampered. They get mopped, once a month or so, with hot water and Mr. Clean. They are swept nearly daily. I think they are beautiful; not perfect, but beautiful. Some people remove their shoes when they come in. I encourage them not to; their socks will be matted with dog hair. Some people leave their shoes on. I have PF, too. I must wear shoes all the time; I cannot walk without my support shoes. I can't wear house slippers; no support for the arches. Here's part of the sewing room floor and Harry's toenails that keep everything real! Here's part of the office floor, showing an 8-ft. long cut in the hardwood. It runs at an angle to the bookcase. The previous owners cut a piece of plywood laying on the floow with a power saw. There's a perfectly straight, 1/"8 - 3/16" wide cut crosswise to the floorboards. There's no hiding it; there's no disquising it. It's just part of the floor, just like the dog scratches. (The ceiling is not "dirty;" it's actually painted the same camel color as the top part of the walls but the lighting makes it look darker.) Everyone is welcome to walk on my floors with whatever is on their feet....See MoreAzorean pottery food-safe? oven-safe?
Comments (21)Yeah! Yes, food safe by the sticker! Problem solved. Pretty, too. The fork means general food, actually, and the wine glass means that it's okay for the things that soak up lead, like wine and honey. Together they mean stop worrying. :) I'm so pleased you found the sticker!! Re oven, you said that they're "serving pieces", and also that at least one absorbed a lot of water. That makes me think they might be terracotta but also could just be clay. The problem is the water. If there's more water in the clay than can get out easily when heated, the dish could crack, or if it's too rapid a heat difference, it could shatter. If you just want to warm it, rather than cook in it, it should be fine. It will have been fired at a much higher temperature just to exist, and it really is the water that's the issue. I had a pottery oven dish that cracked on the first use, so the company sent a replacement. That cracked on the second or third use, and I gave up. And that dish was specifically designed for cooking and I was careful about not causing a thermal shock from changing temperatures too fast. If it were stoneware, it wouldn't soak up so much water with the green beans. I don't think it would if it were terracotta either, but terracotta does darken. Both stoneware and terracotta are fine, unglazed, at baking temperatures. Just don't go right from the oven to cold stone (put it on a rack or trivet). But I fear your dishes might just be clay (pottery), at which point, at least try it with something not too wet if you're going to put them in the oven. Writersblock, people with high lead exposure from tins or cosmetics, or eating paint, showed cognitive deficits. Children are especially vulnerable, which is why it's so important to remove flaking lead paint. It tastes like candy. Painters used to chew on it too. But the epidemiologists and environmental health researchers look at statistical clusters using health, attendance, mandated test scores, employment records, etc., to find where there are deficits and do site investigations to see if there are pollutants that might be correlated with them. The fact is that people will survive if they can--you can cut and serve the air in parts of China, and people are surviving--but they weren't just fine, and things are actually much better now with a bigger population because while there are plenty of noxious particulates still being spewed, they're not as bad. There are some extreme examples of lead poisoning in history, where people actually died, but even with high exposure, they're more likely to go gently mad. Some of the other heavy metals are less obvious. There are therapies that can, at least sometimes, remove them from the body. I saw one report that a kid was diagnosed as autistic who really had heavy metal poisoning. Fine art painters who chew their brushes (like chewing a pencil) end up with heavy metal poisoning. They don't die. But it's not good. The great news is that unless the people who made PM's pretty pottery were lying thieves, we now know that no such thing is going to happen from using her dishes!!!...See Morelilleth
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