Sigh. Always test cast iron of unknown history. Any wall mounting tips lol?
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Cast Iron
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Is there no way to get rid of the lead?
My question is really academic - literally. I'm curious about the physics/chemistry of what happens when lead is melted in cast iron.
If a pan tests positive, seems safer bet to retire it - pans are cheap compared to your health.
Chemistry instructor here. It depends on how hot you get the pan. For the most part, the lead is going to stay in the seasoning, like someone mentioned above. However, if it got anywhere close to the melting point of the iron, you could wind up incorporating some of the lead into the iron itself. This seems pretty unlikely, as lead melts at about 325^o^C and iron melts above 1,500^o^C, but it's possible as natural gas and propane burners can get up to above 1,900^o^C
Lol I'd would love to see home attempts to even try to get it to that temperature. But I would also like to be far far away. Because at those temps if the sounding area isn't sufficiently prepared for metal casting. Anything is a bomb. Even the dirt and concrete.
In my experience, people get really creative when it comes to kitchen/garage chemistry, so all I'm saying is I wouldn't rule out anything that is physically possible.
Especially if we're talking about one's personal health.
Edit: since it's relevant, I literally just taught a lab section that has a research project component, and one group did their project on metallurgy. They were able to use butane Bunsen burner attachments and cinder blocks to make a furnace that was able to melt iron and make some mediocre steel alloys using only stuff you can buy at Home Depot.
I'd hope they weren't cooking it until it was glowing bright white hot.
Me too, but since we don't know exactly why they were melting lead or what other metals might have been mixed it, it's impossible to say for sure.
I'd wager it's mostly surface contamination, so maybe but it's not worth it - assuming you can even safely remove the lead without contaminating everything around you, you now have a bunch of lead to dispose of.
Once that's done and you have a pan with "undetectable levels" of lead do you even trust it knowing the pan's history?
Its a lot of tools, time, and testing, when you could just go buy an uncontaminated pan and move on.
This is something I would expect a chemistry type content creator like codyslab, nilered/blue, or E&I to do just to demonstrate how feasible it is.
With a cost breakdown and showing what chemical waste remains after the fact, it would be super obvious it's not worth it unless you have some sentimental attachment to it, like it was your great grandparents pan or something.
oh god, don't tell Nilered. He'll end up melting down hundreds of cast iron trying to get enough lead to make something with lol.
seriously though, whoever does it I hope they find some older ones to test as well and not just trying to replicate it with melting metals. Might be like trying to find a 4-leaf clover and they would be getting tons of people just shipping pans but I think it would be important to see the effects time had. Full testing including cutting open and seeing the results in the layers below the surface if they're trying to remove it.