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Using what's simple and what you know is safe: 304 stainless steel. Some more details after I wanted to check my own assumptions [0]. This paper is an awesome

Using what's simple and what you know is safe: 304 stainless steel. Some more details after I wanted to check my own assumptions [0]. This paper is an awesome read. Chromium comes with the asterisk that hexavalent chromium is quite dangerous even in small quantities. I haven't found anything on the form of Chromium leeched from (relatively) cold temperature cooking or room temperature containing. Everything I've seen is in the context of worker exposure during hot work (welding). 0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284091/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4284091/

glimshe 3y ago
Glass, for containers.
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hedora 3y ago
Stainless leaks a tiny amount of chromium when brand new. The latter stages of manufacturing bind in or eliminate most of the nasty stuff. After that, the release follows an exponential decay (unlike with plastics, where once the outer layer is abraded, leaching speeds up).
coryrc 3y ago
I was recently reading why stainless things have a prop 65 warning, and it seemed people once believed they needed it because of the chromium, but a ruling said it was no longer needed because it wasn't in hexavalent form. Might help if you wanted to look into it further.
amluto 3y ago
I don’t have a great understanding of why people like 304 (or 316 or 18/8 or 18/10) etc stainless steel for cooking so much. Nickel is not that cheap, and while it’s apparently not toxic per se, it’s a rather common allergen. Adding large amounts of nickel makes steel austentitic and hence non-magnetic at room temperature, which is suboptimal for induction cooking and for use on refrigerators :) Apparently nickel adds a small (tiny?) amount of corrosion resistance, and I think that austentitic steel is more ductile, but there is no shortage of extremely cheap non-austentitic cookware out there. So why does nicer cookware usually contain nickel?

glimshe 3y ago

Glass, for containers.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

hedora 3y ago

Stainless leaks a tiny amount of chromium when brand new. The latter stages of manufacturing bind in or eliminate most of the nasty stuff. After that, the release follows an exponential decay (unlike with plastics, where once the outer layer is abraded, leaching speeds up).

coryrc 3y ago

I was recently reading why stainless things have a prop 65 warning, and it seemed people once believed they needed it because of the chromium, but a ruling said it was no longer needed because it wasn't in hexavalent form. Might help if you wanted to look into it further.

amluto 3y ago

I don’t have a great understanding of why people like 304 (or 316 or 18/8 or 18/10) etc stainless steel for cooking so much. Nickel is not that cheap, and while it’s apparently not toxic per se, it’s a rather common allergen. Adding large amounts of nickel makes steel austentitic and hence non-magnetic at room temperature, which is suboptimal for induction cooking and for use on refrigerators :) Apparently nickel adds a small (tiny?) amount of corrosion resistance, and I think that austentitic steel is more ductile, but there is no shortage of extremely cheap non-austentitic cookware out there. So why does nicer cookware usually contain nickel?