Let's settle this Aluminum thing

[Neo of WNEC]

Okay,

I've seen a lot of people talking about aluminum as a metal being dangerous to smoke out of. This will, no doubt, be a heated debate, but let's try to keep it civilized, eh?

He's what I have for data, I would appreciate it if someone can come up with a REASONABLE, and well THOUGHT-OUT response, even if its contridictory. Odds are that the mistake will be in my wording, and not in the facts. Rather than look stuff up online, I got together with a chemisty prof on campus, and we tried various ways that aluminum appears in household products, as well as aluminum pipes, and aircraft grade aluminum.

All tests were done with an electric heating prong. Temperatures were recorded using a simple lighter and then were recreated with the heating prong over a controlled cross-sectional area.

Aluminum foil: Bad

Aluminum foil (such as Reynolds) contains only about 70% aluminum. The rest of the additives in the foil are there to prevent possible reactions with food that might come in contact with it. You cannot remove ALL additives simply by heating, or burning the foil. A loss of 3% mass was recorded, this is a large amout of material to end up inside your lungs.


Aluminum cans: Bad

Aluminum cars are much higher percentage aluminum than foil is. Unfortunately the ink makes direct exposure to flame dangerous. And when we tested a Coke can with about 1psi (we tested from .1psi to 15psi) we found that even after the ink had been chemically removed, the can tended to flake after being heated for a prolonged period. This means that it is possible to inhale bits of aluminum by sucking brittle aluminum, this is never good. Since the loss of material in this test was linear with respect to the cross-sectional area of the flame, some good calculus shows that it would be possible, in time, to inhale the entire can.


Aluminum pipes: Good

We tested both a 99% aluminum pipe (1% inert metals) and an aluminum pipe coated with nickel. Both were completely safe. The 99% pure aluminum pipe showed less than a picogram loss in mass after being heted in a direct flame. A pico gram is 1x10^-12 grams. Or 0.000000000001 grams. That's a small amount of loss folks. The pipe coated with nickel showed a heavier loss in mass, but the mass spectometer showed nothing corrosive in the smoke. Most likely it was oxygen, or some other inert gas being burned off of an imperfect nickel-plated surface; nickel is fine when comercially used. If you see a blue or purple flame, then this is not a "healthy" form of nickel.


Machine-grade aluminum: Good

The stuff we tested was bought from a local metal supplier as stock. We machined off .001 inch to make the surface smooth, massed it, and burned it. The aluminum was supposed to be 99% pure (density tests proved it to be considerably higher ~99.7%). Almost no loss whatsoever was detected. We deemed losses in machine-grade aluminum to be negligible, close to that of the aluminum pipe.


Aircraft-grade aluminum: Good

This is the metal used in aircraft construction. The Mechanical Engineering lab had a piece in kerosene that we borrowed. Aluminum, when in contact with air, forms a coating of aluminum oxide. Typically this layer is simply smoothed. We did out best to test the metal before heat developed form the exothermic reaction of Aluminum oxide forming (you may know this reaction from some of the hand warmers you can buy that heat up when mixed with air... also sometimes iron). Although we determined that it wa nearly impossible for us to test this metal witht he materials we had, we did decide that after the initial reaction with the air, the metal was still just as safe as the machine-grade aluminum, if not more brittle.


Like I said, these are tests. If someone has performed tests that show to the contrary, I would certainly enjoy an exchange of information.

What I wouldn't like is: "Dude, everyone knows smoking from aluminum is bad for you." As that kind of rebutal has almost no weight with anyone.

Please don't hold these tests as gospel, they were preliminary, and only done twice on each material. Since it was a favor, I didn't ask the professor to spend more time recreating the expirament.

Now... any questions? :-)

[Tom069]

sounds pretty good, good enough for me

[WesleePipes85]

Ya I keep telling my friends not to use soda cans for a pipe when they have nothing else. When I have nothing to use... that's when I resort to BAKING! woot.

[LovesToBlaze]

lol. me and my friends always use to resort to aluminum pipes and cans back in freshman year of highschool.

[easy rider]

theres plenty of stuff u can find around the house to smoek out of without fucking up ur lungs or giving u alzehimers. just look around be creative

[Blix]

Looks solid. Nice experiments.

[Grooven2dmb]

wow smarter people than me, good job! I think im just gonna stick to the glass

[antique stoner]

Great! Now will someone please clear up the facts about copper and brass for pipes? I would really like to know this. Thanx

[AtrophyX]

aluminum pipe coated with nickel

yeah...now that's really healthy...i remember i burned a nickel once and inhaled the fumes...wow that was not a good experience...

[Canadian]

What heat were the subjects exposed to? a reagular flame, and for how long? And remeber, there is Weed abosrbing alot of the heat when you put the flame to it, and also, when the budd is buringing, it keeps the aluminum at a certain heat...you must give alll details!

[Neo of WNEC]

Canadian, weed is fairly poor conductor of heat which is why it has a tendency to burn. However your concern is noted. When asked about the effect of "tobacco" in a pipe, the Professor said that the "heat absorded by anything in the pipe will be described by an exponention decrease with regard to distance."

Specifically, its goverend by the raw equation form T=ke^(rt). Or Newton's universal equation for cooling in inverse. Where k is a constant, r is the rate of cooling and t is the time in seconds. When differentiated with respect to distance (s) you get a differential equation expressed in terms of dT/ds.

Long story short, when you plug in for the value of s a distance of delta s (delta s being the opperand ds in the dff eq dT/ds) as delta s gets larger the effect is exponentially decreased. You weed will effect temperature VERY slightly. In the long run 1 degree C for every 30 degrees of direct heat. This is assuming that there is a 1cm layer of weed covering the entire surface to be heated. Usually this affect will be much smaller.

[galvingirl]

umm wow LOL i just read that and didnt understand a word of it, but you seem really smart and whatever it means, i bet its true lol

[InferiorWang]

I've taken so much math that I didn't want to take so I understood that and I'm glad someone did a study like this so we can see conclusive results instead of conjecture. One thing that has always confused me is that hookah places (where they actually use shisha tobacco) always put a piece of aluminum foil between the coal and the tobacco. Maybe they should be using something else.

[Pyrite]

Smoking out of a soda can makes you look like a crackhead. ;>

[deltamike21]

Well, from the years that i had been welding different alloys, can can tell you, that i wouldn't smoke out of metal in general... stick with glass....