User Tools

Site Tools


areas:ceramics:foodsafeglaze

Are our glazes "food safe"?

Short answer, Yes.

Long answer, it depends…
Glaze being “food safe” according to the FDA is basically saying there is not cadmium or lead in it. basically these two metals are banned because your body doesn't have a mechanism to remove it from your system. In that respect most glazes on the market are “food safe”. Including all the glazes in our studio.

The big thing ceramicists are talking about now a days is “glaze durability” basically meaning its not going to chip, scratch, leach metals, or trap food inside the glaze. So when you put orange juice or coffee in your mug it doesn't dissolve some copper into it and slowly poison you, or your plate doesn't scratch when you use a knife on it and grind up some fine glass to ingest with your steak dinner.

There are also a bunch of glaze defects based on application and firing. pinholing, crazing, crawling, and shivering are all not desirable. will they kill you? probably not but they can trap food particles to mold and generate their own toxins.

If we do make a “not food safe” glaze we will mark it as such. That being said we don't have any lead in the studio (except in some circuit boards) and while we do have cadmium its in an interesting form that makes it inert. Basically its encapsulated in an inert material effectively making it “food safe” because that encapsulation doesn't melt https://www.masoncolor.com/sites/masoncolor.com/files/mason_color_works_sds_6021.pdf https://digitalfire.com/material/stains+encapsulated#:~:text=Encapsulated%20stains%20are%20made%20by,harmful%20metals%20into%20the%20glass.

areas/ceramics/foodsafeglaze.txt · Last modified: 2023/03/30 13:16 by wildapricot-mann_jeff