Zinc coated hardware safe to use in Egg?

Zinc plated metal is a bad thing in welding, the zinc ablates and does things like coating your lungs and your eyes.

Why take the chance when it is all available in stainless for a few $$ more? Zinc and fire for toxic smoked ribs. Maybe you could call them Heavy Metal Ribs...All kidding aside, I would not recommend it.

i like to use stainless as well, but zinc melts somewhere around 800 and doesnt boil and gas off till twice that temp. ive tried to melt lead in an egg for fishing weights before and while the melting temp is in the 400's, it takes more heat than that in an egg or your going to be waiting all day and night

What stike said.....  Here is some information:  Welding Galvenized Metal   Zinc fumes are indeed bad for you, but zinc doesn't vaporize until 1650 degrees F. 

i like to use stainless as well, but zinc melts somewhere around 800 and doesnt boil and gas off till twice that temp. ive tried to melt lead in an egg for fishing weights before and while the melting temp is in the 400's, it takes more heat than that in an egg or your going to be waiting all day and night

Whoa, I cast a lot of lead, for round ball to shoot in my flintlock, and I never, ever, would do it in something I use for cooking.

it's a red herring.  i don't understand why someone would be worried about toxic gasses coming from their egg from zinc, if you utterly ignore the highly toxic fumes that come out of it in large amounts every single time you are using it.  Carbon monoxide is lethal, and it is produced in large amounts every time.

zinc fumes occur at welding temps, as do stainless fumes.

of those two, stainless fumes are highly dangerous w/r/t to cancer.  chromium especially.

zinc fumes are not lethal, and not known to cause cancer.  you can be exposed 15 minutes a day, every day, to zinc fumes. 

to me, it's astounding that people will focus on something that doesn't happen, basing their fear on some small connection to reality, while completely overlooking the toxins produced in wood smoke to begin with.

your concerns may be accurate. but they are also wildly misplaced.

if your zinc is placed in the egg in a way that causes it to vaporize, then using stainless in its place would be far MORE dangerous. 

but it's wasted worry.  you aren't going to jit those temps.

...and if you DID, then breathing in the zinc fumes wouldn't hurt you.  the carbon monoxide would.

"but those fumes could get on my food, stike.  i don't want zinc on my food and body."
well then, stop taking ZiCam for colds, stop putting diaper cream on your baby, stop using sunscreen. stop eating beef and pork..... stop taking your multivitamins...

don't swear something off just because some guy you bump into at a cookout tells you it's bad for you or going to kill you.  and don't ignore the REAL threats.

Right on, Stike.

My homemade adjustable grates are all held up by zinc-coated materials. I don't have three ears...yet!

hmmm, well that's why I said I was waiting to get more info b4 posting, but the guy said he thought he'd be "OK" and seemed like he was gonna go out & load up on zinc hardware - and I just wanted to put a caution out there to give pause until more info came in. 

"Red herring" or not, the information I got is that zinc plating DOES indeed transition from solid to gaseous (that process is known as sublimation) under certain circumstances.  A side note is that Cadmium does too, and NEITHER is allowed to be used in my work environment under the following conditions:

Our policy is to NOT use zinc (or cadmium) coated parts (fasteners, turnbuckles, shackles, etc) when designing rigging systems to suspend "things" in preparation for and during Thermal Vacuum (TVAC) cycling tests, where the "things" are subjected to extreme hot & cold temp cycling.  Reason is that Zinc (as well as Cadmium) is known to sublimate in a vacuum environment (especially at elevated temperatures).  I didn't get a chance to write down everything the Chem. E guy was telling me, but if I remembered the numbers correctly, Cadmium started to sublimate at about 40 degrees C, and Zinc at about 100 degrees C - which are both well within the temps produced by the Egg, and well below each material's melting points.

Now, after that convo, and the convo on here, the questions that could be raised are "is this a human health issue or not" as well as "does this ONLY occur in a vacuum environment or does this occur under normal atmospheric pressures" - I do not know the answers to these questions, but I can try to find out if I can get hold of the Chem E guys again (sometimes due to the processes we have @ work, communicating w/ others NOT in your dept can be... shall we say.... painful). 

The only other info I got was that the particles that would be floating in the air after sublimation could get deposited on the "things" that were under going the TVAC testing, and as such, would contaminate those "things."  Again, there might be a world of difference between contaminating a state-of-the-art piece of equipment versus being harmful to a human. 

Furthermore, "vaporizing" in the sense that some are using the term is, in that context, at a much, much higher temperature, which is past the material's melting point.  The process of sublimation can occur BELOW the material's melting point. 

Finally, just because a chemical or element is "OK" to be ingested into the human body in one fashion, doesn't mean it's "OK" to be ingested in another fashion - case in point, we can drink tap water, and there is bacteria living in that tap water that our body can ward off if we drink it.  However, there have been SEVERAL cases of folks who use that same tap water as the water in a sinus rinse, and squirt it up their nose, and then get DEATHLY sick because the bacteria gets into their nasal passages. 

Same water, different ways of entering the body - with MUCH different results. 

At any rate, I only meant to convey more information, not start a panic - oh, and the info wasn't from "some guy @ a cookout" it was from degreed Chemical Engineers who's job it is to know this stuff. 

As a final note, I reiterate that I wasn't trying to start a panic or say definitively that it was or was not "safe" but rather to educate & find out more info. 

Anyway, that's all I know about it @ this time...

@stike. Thanks. I thought in general welding of zinc materials was avoided and respirators were required for anyone who worked regularly in the presence of zinc fumes (welding, coating, cutting, etc). 

@HillbillyHtech: metals will evaporate at much lower temperatures when under vacuum, however neither zinc nor cadmium will evaporate at those temps (Cd looks like about 260C, Zn @ 310C).  However, if I remember correctly you manufacture semiconductor devices, so even a handful of atoms can screw up some of the things you may be making or testing. 

I worked in vacuum deposition and semiconductor manufacturing for about 6 years, degrees in metallurgy and semiconductor physics/materials.  I still wouldn't trust everything I say :P

Peking - for whatever reason, the 40C temp & the 100C temp seem to stick in my head - so not sure why our numbers differ.  As I said, it's sometimes difficult to get "face time" w/ other guys not directly working the same project, because they require a charge # in order to charge time to the project they'd be talking to you about.  And unless I can somehow come up w/ a rationale as to why I need to know this info for my current project, I don't think I can give them a charge # in order to charge to a BBQ forum :P

Stike - And yes, the key term I believe is that this process occurs in a "vacuum environment" which obviously, the Egg is not :P

And finally, as far as the type of work I do - not saying it's any more important than anyone else's work, but my company does have limitations as to what info they allow out to the general public - that's their policy, not mine.  And on this forum, I'm speaking for me, not my company.  As such, I'd rather not say what I do, as it's not pertinent for me to divulge such info on a BBQ forum.  "I can neither confirm nor deny that statement" :-\"