Glass marbles, how to tell not leaded

When you buy marbles, how do u tell if it is not leaded?

ejiang said:

When you buy marbles, how do u tell if it is not leaded?

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I tried to figure this out (probably spent 50 hours), came to the conclusion I couldn't be certain and decided not to use them. Even if you find food safe marbles, question whether they are alcohol safe. Some wine makers say clear marbles are OK, and that's certainly better than colored, but not they're not for me. If you need something like marbles, consider HDPE (high density polyethylene) balls. HDPE is widely used in food packaging and FDA approved food grade HDPE is readily available online for around 10 cents or so. If you decide to go this route and have difficulty finding a source, let me know. Also, if you want marbles, consider putting them in an alcohol safe plastic bag.

Tony P.

One more quick point. Many of the balls are hollow and float. I think that's a good thing because they also take up some air space and reduce wine / air contact.

Tony P.

MoreWine has some. Each 3# is supposed to displace ~1L. I have NOT used these, I just happened to see them on their site one day.

http://morewinemaking.com/view_product/9195//Glass_Marbles_For_Topping_Up_-_3_lbs

Uhmm, guys, dont really want to break this to you but, wine glasses are actually made from leaded glass. This is done because leaded glass has a high index of refraction and creates all the pretty reflection and shimmering qualities of good quality wine glasses. Last time I checked Wine glasses were safe to drink from.

Shocked me when I heard about it to

Source: Dr. Roberto Benson, UTK Material Science Engineering.

True enough Seth (leaded crystal, anyways - dunno the difference between crystal and regular glass), but the time that the wine spends in the glass isnt near long enough for anything significant to leech out and hurt us.... A tad different when you consider leaded glass marbles in an aging carboy

Deezil said:

True enough Seth (leaded crystal, anyways - dunno the difference between crystal and regular glass), but the time that the wine spends in the glass isnt near long enough for anything significant to leech out and hurt us.... A tad different when you consider leaded glass marbles in an aging carboy

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That's is exactly what I wanted to say

If you look at the chart down below you can see exactly what our glass is made of. As you can see container glass has Aluminum in it. That does not sound extremely pleasant to me. However, we do not tend to worry about that now do we? Container glass is used in drink-ware. I think the secret is that thier has to be some sort of DRIVING FORCE to make the Al come out of solution. Their has to be something to make this chemical reaction happen. To me it seems logical to say the same is true for leaded glass.

To make the argument of some kinds of glass being dangerous for wine making and others not dangerous you would have to believe that only the leaded glass has a leaching interaction with the wine while the other types of glass for some reason have no reaction at all. I will however draw the line at painted marbles.. Put something that is painted in everclear and I would not be surprised to see that the Everclear turns the colour of said paint.

Deezil said:

True enough Seth (leaded crystal, anyways - dunno the difference between crystal and regular glass), but the time that the wine spends in the glass isnt near long enough for anything significant to leech out and hurt us.... A tad different when you consider leaded glass marbles in an aging carboy

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My thinking is that their will not be any leaching at all. No matter how much time passes. Btw, fun fact.. Glass is not crystalline at all. Else you would not be able to see thru it. However, I am not sure on what is the naming distinction between crystalline and regular glass.

Glass marbles will be fine but the plastic ones you might want to reconsider. Leeching out of glass is not a problem. What is your carboy you are adding the marbles into made of???? Sometime people over think $hit

Call me an over-thinker then, last i checked its not illegal or a sin.

Seth - There's plenty of documentation out there about the leaching of lead from leaded stemware into acidic solutions (wine). To be plain ol "crystal", it has to have 24%+ lead content; "light crystal" has to have 4%, while "heavy crystal" can have up to 32% lead. They've actually begun to, somehow, make lead-free crystal, although im not sure it has all the same properties.

Mike - If you remember older carboys, they were (and most glass at the time was) tinted green because of the chemical make-up - i cant remember what it was that made the green color, right now... They've since changed the chemical make up, to make them safer for acidic solutions (because carboys are used for more than wine & beer) - theres some information out there about that too, but it takes a little deeper digging..

But anyways, this was about the marbles - not the carboys or the stemware - and i'd have to agree on passing up the painted marbles. Being an overthinker, i'd put more thought in it personally, before using the clear ones - and i imagine i'd draw the same conclusion as TonyP.

But.. To each their own.

mmadmikes1 said:

Glass marbles will be fine but the plastic ones you might want to reconsider. Leeching out of glass is not a problem. What is your carboy you are adding the marbles into made of???? Sometime people over think $hit

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I accumulated 6 of 23 liter carboys, 2 of 19 liter, and one 12 liter.

I am making 3 CC showcase, 2 paklab Onxy, 4 paklab vino

I'm with Mike. Why should I assume glass marbles are anymore likely to have 'leachable' lead than the glass carboys?

Moreover, lead poisoning is a much greater risk to children than adults (while it can affect adults dramatically if it's acute poisoning, the amount that might be leached from glass marbles would be infinitesimal), and since my children with developing nervous systems and brains are not drinking my wine, I am even less concerned about the possibility.

Deezil said:

Call me an over-thinker then, last i checked its not illegal or a sin.

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OVER THINKER>>>>O its a sin ...for sure. Everything seems to be. If the same chemical was used that made green coke bottles then I am screwed because I drank a lot out of those bottles.

mmadmikes1 said:

OVER THINKER>>>>O its a sin ...for sure. Everything seems to be. If the same chemical was used that made green coke bottles then I am screwed because I drank a lot out of those bottles.

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Still dont remember what chemical is the cause of the green tint, but i know coke will eat rust off metal.. And i've drank my fair share as well

Hey, Im going to talk to my Professor for material science and see what he says. Im sure he knows better than all of us. And it should be interesting to see what he has to say.

Deezil said:

Call me an over-thinker then, last i checked its not illegal or a sin.

Seth - There's plenty of documentation out there about the leaching of lead from leaded stemware into acidic solutions (wine). To be plain ol "crystal", it has to have 24%+ lead content; "light crystal" has to have 4%, while "heavy crystal" can have up to 32% lead. They've actually begun to, somehow, make lead-free crystal, although im not sure it has all the same properties.

Mike - If you remember older carboys, they were (and most glass at the time was) tinted green because of the chemical make-up - i cant remember what it was that made the green color, right now... They've since changed the chemical make up, to make them safer for acidic solutions (because carboys are used for more than wine & beer) - theres some information out there about that too, but it takes a little deeper digging..

But anyways, this was about the marbles - not the carboys or the stemware - and i'd have to agree on passing up the painted marbles. Being an overthinker, i'd put more thought in it personally, before using the clear ones - and i imagine i'd draw the same conclusion as TonyP.

But.. To each their own.

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Hey, good post. I did not see the documentation until this morning. According to the abstract the lead leaching at one min was 30% of the total lead found at 24 hours. The concentration at one mind was also 50% of the concentration found at 30 mins.

So at 1 min we had 107.4 nano grams per ml. And at 24 hours we had 467ng/ml Which is quite tiny.. To be dangerous according to get elavated levels of lead in the blood you need 25 micrograms per decileter.

Converting the units at 1 min we have .01074 mico grams per dl
at 24 hours we have .0467 micro grams per dl .

I am going to make a gross assumption. I am going to assume that the concentration increases linearly ie every day it sits we add .0467 micrograms per dl. Which is not accurate because the rate of absorption slows down over time in a large manner.

If we say that
.0467 micrograms_per_dl *Days_to_reach_elevated_level=Elavated_level.
we het .0467*D=25
D=535.33
It would take 535.33 days for the concentration of lead to reach the amount in elevated blood. In reality it would take much longer for this to happen because the leaching rate decays over time.

Also consider that drinking a solution that has the same concentration as elevated blood you would need to somehow drink enough of the leaded wine to make your blood reach the same concentration as is in your drink.

I believe the human body has 5 liters of blood in it. which is 50 deci liters.
If you say that
Xmicrogram/50 Deciliters =25 microgram/deciliter

We find that you would need to consume 1250 micrograms of lead.

So lets find out how much of our leaded wine we would need to drink to consume 1250 micrograms of lead.



.0467 micrograms per/dl*deciliters=1250micrograms.
You would need to drink 26766.59 deci Liters of our leaded wine.

Ie almost 2,676,600 ml of leaded wine.. ie 3568.8 bottles one wine.
This calculation would be like taking leaded wine and somehow pulling all the lead out of it.

So in conclusion, If the amount of lead leached per day stayed constant (it wont it will go down) it would take 535 days to reach a dangerous blood level concentration. Once you had a wine with a dangerous blood level concentration you would need to extract the lead from 3500 bottles of it and put that in your body.

However, A couple things could lower the needed amount of wine needed to poison one's self. Ie if the marbles leach much faster than the glassware due to either increased surface area or possibly increased lead concentration inside of the marbles.

If we said for laughs that the marbles leached 50 times as well as the glass ware then you would only need 70 bottles of this wine.. Also, I do not know whether or not lead keeps accumulating in your body over time or how quickly your body can get rid of it..

Food for thought. I personally would choose unleaded marbles, but I like to play safe.

Sorry, but I don't see it. When you can use HDPE, which is safer, cheaper, and better, why even consider marbles. There's a lot of information posted, but no one's shown statistics on what's in marbles from child-labor sweat shops in China. Besides lead, there's cadmium and who knows what else. Also, putting marbles in alcohol is different from other liquids. It only makes sense to me to consider marbles in alcohol safe plastic bags.

Tony P.

TonyP said:

Sorry, but I don't see it. When you can use HDPE, which is safer, cheaper, and better, why even consider marbles. There's a lot of information posted, but no one's shown statistics on what's in marbles from child-labor sweat shops in China. Besides lead, there's cadmium and who knows what else. Also, putting marbles in alcohol is different from other liquids. It only makes sense to me to consider marbles in alcohol safe plastic bags.

Tony P.

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Plus HDPE isnt very likely to shatter your carboy if it drops too fast.

seth8530 said:

Plus HDPE isnt very likely to shatter your carboy if it drops too fast.

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Seth, good point. Also, the HDPE balls I'm referring to are hollow, but strong. When added they sit on top of the wine. My thinking is that this provides two advantages. First, the balls are between the wine and the air which should provide extra protection. Second, they can actually eliminate air space by sitting on top of the wine.
Tony P.