Just need to vent...

Those days are long gone. I would guess all the ground had lead in it not there naturally, and the fruit maybe. There also was a wooden cess pool tank, not a septic system, in the ground about forty feet from the well. The parents tied into the city sewer at the same time as the water. The well was about 12 inches in diameter and had only a wooden cover around the pipes. Mice would fall into the well sometimes. Natural ground fed bottled water for sale lost opportunity.

 

I looked at literature on metal-accumulating plants, and found no trees at all. Which might merit further thought. For woody plants it's a long and complicated trip for soil water (and its ions) to get up to where fruits are made.

Food plants that do that thing include rice and lotus. Aquatic or semi, with Eh favoring soluble forms of lead and cadmium.

Eh ... it's like pH but even more complicated. I'd vent about how complicated science is but ... dang I just can't.

 

A recent lead-in-food scandal involved fruit that was sweetened by lead. I first thought lead acetate but now it looks more like lead chromate.

Dang people, that's anti-corrosion paint for aviation and marine use! Was from Ecuador, which is now politically unstable. If the bad guys there burned down a particular applesauce factory, I might not object.

 

are not the last two post more related to how ions are currently processed out of the staples, than how they are formed within the staples in the first place.
News is news and will never change. Read any string theory lately? not that string theory is bad or wrong in any way, it just we still don't know for sure and we all have different way of interpreting the data as presented.

 

No, talking about ions coming in. By fair means or foul.

Not aware of ion removal in food processing.

 

I probably should have just let it go at processing. Even if I reverse the process and take the ions out rather than add them it's still pretty much just the process - both fair and foul as you mentioned above.
I hope that's not circular logic.

 

I'm still itchy about applesauce in anything other than a glass jar, sorry.

And that's when you aren't sitting in front of a food mill with a bunch of apple skins in the barrel and on the floor...

 

The skins the best part, except when it's on the floor at the applesauce processing plant.

 

'Cept the skins are where all of the nasties are if you're not careful which tree you get your apples from.

Me?
I prefer cider.
Apples. Preserved....Nature's Way.

@ Equator:
They tried to solve their Mara Salvatrucha problem, but the enemy always gets a vote.

The problem with not-quite-wishing that the 'baddies' would burn down the 'bad thing' is that they often don't stop when the bad thing stops smouldering.

 

Johnny Appleseed was actually planting cider apple trees. That got cleaned up in history's retelling.

 

Comparing apple to orange skins, seems not many cooks / chefs know the tricks to using more of the whole fruits, except perhaps orange zest. In the vegge dept., I'm still trying to figure how to use the beet greens I have left over from 3 beets I just had with dinner tonight along side chicken vegetable soup.

 

Lots of things did.

Communications preservation and transportation.

Pre-carbon, it was a whole 'nother world.......
"News of the World" sorta touches on the clutch point between the pre-carbon age and what we're dealing with now.

Note to self:
Reread Paulette Jiles' book.

EDIT: The Color of Lightning? Stormy Weather?

-who knew?

 

Most lead pipes form a layer on the surface, and the water flowing through mostly doesn't interact with the lead, making it... not as horrible.

The problem is when the water is either acidic or contains certain other pollutants that can eat through that less-reactive surface. Then you really get a lot of lead contamination.

 

The water company adds ortho-phosphates to form that layer. As you say, it comes off with the wrong water chemistry. I mention them because they are fertilizer for algae. Specifically the 'not really algae' cyanbacteria, which can be a real pain to deal with in an aquarium.

 

@Trollbait Neat, I didn't realize that layer was maintained by design.

And city water is bomb fuel for aquaculture. Interesting.

Since you got me thinking about it and I'm actually home today, I dipped a strip.

Alkalinity ~150ppm, pH 6.9, total hardness 250ppm. The neutralizer and softener are both overdue for charging.

 

Don't systems automatically recharge?
.

 

our neutralizer has to go somewhere to fill it up. agent might be dangerous? idk.
softener gets filled regularly with bags of salt.
they work automatically, and the softener back flushes automatically, but they don't refill automatically, unless there are systems more sophisticated than ours.

 

The cyanobacteria, blue-green, algae that grow with the excess phosphate likely won't be the type you want. Worst, you'll get black algae, a relative of the red algae group. It is a tough bastard that can't simply be wiped off, and shrugs off typical algaecides. Killing it generally involves bleach, peroxide, or boiling.

Is that before the treatment systems? Doesn't sound bad if so.

 

That's post treatment, but with visibly depleted calcium in the neutralizer tank and no salt left in the softener supply tank.

 

A quick search says a pH of 6.5 or less is when copper and brass start leaching out. If the untreated water isn't far from that, you probably fine with the current system.