How Bad Is Tin Foil When Used For A Screen.

Well shit, that's why my head felt lighter... 

 

I have seen this post before. You will get aluminum oxide poisioning from smoking aluminum foil.

 

I made pipes out of foil 30 years ago and I'm fine. However I wouldn't advise.

 

Smoke it up. It adds flavor when using gum foil.

 

The chemical reaction that happens when tinfoil is heated up is poisonous. Doing it on time is fine. Just don't do it regularly


Happy toking!

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Use a pebble! nature is your friend

 

What about every hookah smoker everywhere that puts coals on tinfoil?

 

Why is this even a question? OP you can get a pack of 10 for the price of a lighter, c'mon now.
 
http://grasscity.com/glass-accessories-1/smoking-screens/10-pack-of-stainless-steel-screens-3-4-inch.html

 

ive always wondered the  same thing ,,
 the heat would be less than that of butane at least.
there are also reusable (brass possibly) rigid screens available, and from what ive experienced  in the really turk dense areas of berlin they seem to be the more preferred, authentic choice 
but personally I dont think the traces of aluminium are enough to cause problems unless your using it very frequently with little space in between.
 on a similar note: there is varying trace amounts aluminium in black tea ( 14-27mg per Litre apparently), black tea is consumed daily for years on end in some countries but there is still no evidence that excessive tea drinking causes symptoms of toxicity

 

when i was too young to buy papers or a piece, we smoked out of tinfoil bowl, whether it be straight tinfoil pipe or a bullshit plastic bottle bong and pen stem gum as a sealant.....
 
it wasnt aluminum tho it was tin.... idk if it make a differance...
 
 

 

I smoked from homemade buckets and bongs through academy and college no harm done to me.
I was taught junkies would run a lighter over the tin foil first to burn off excess chemicals, useless fact just became usefull!

 

Not only is it very poisonous, but foil never decomposes. Think about mother nature first.

 

ALSO QUIT CLUTTERING THE SITE, THIS IS ALREADY A QUESTION.

 

I dunno... Bic lighters burn around 2000* celsius, charcoal burns around 2500* Celsius...

Aluminum doesn't offgas until it vaporizes, and the melting point is 660* celsius. The vape temp is super high, like 4400* F or something.

I think it's fine. You won't get Alzheimer's. You won't get sick from it. Even if you did manage to "vape" aluminum you still get more from other sources...

 

dude pipe screens are so fuckin cheap why use tin foil. I literally buy 500 pipe screens at a time so I can use a fresh one every bowl pack. Only costs like 10 bucks.

 

 Always smoke shiny side down and quickly burn off the film. Same with brillo for your crack pipe. Hey why not just use a piece of that? LOL

 

Lol If you can throw down 20 bucks for some bud then you can pick up cheap ass brass screen or use nug plug.

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I know this is an old thread but I turned it up and I expect others may do the same, so I'll chime in with a few comments. First, lets clear the air. Most people on here are talking about aluminum foil. I don't know where anyone would actually get TIN foil - is this actually generally available other than from a scientific metals supplier, or your great-great-grandmother's pre-WWII kitchen? So, then talking about aluminum foil, the generally available kitchen foils are very pure aluminum, so the only toxin would be the aluminum itself. Contrast that to brass which has considerable zinc, trace lead, and sometimes arsenic content - depends on which brass alloy you get and I'm betting pipe screen sellers don't specify that. So back to aluminum. The details for Aluminum are as follows:
Aluminum foil is relatively pure aluminum, no intentional other chemicals.

Aluminum
Melting point: 660.3°C (1,221°F)
Boiling Point: 2470 °C (4478 °F)

Aluminum Oxide
Melting point: 2,072°C (3,762°F )
Boiling point: 2,977°C (5,391°F)

Butane flame in air 1970 °C 3578 °F

As for evaporation Aluminum, to evaporate it does not have to be boiling, but it does have to exceed the melting point. Like water at room temperature, molecules will be in some equilibrium with the air surrounding it; at the Boiling point the atmosphere surrounding the melted Al is saturated with the vapor, but this will never happen with aluminum in the presence of oxygen (in air) as it will form aluminum oxide with an even higher melting and boiling point. So, cutting through all the science and getting down to what you can personally observe, if you make an aluminum foil pipe bowl and heat it gently to vaporize the good stuff in cannabis, you will find that tar has deposited on the bottom of the bowl, not that the aluminum has evaporated. Or heat a piece of the foil directly with a gentle lighter flame and you will not see it evaporate; you may see it change to a more white Aluminum oxide form in a strong torch-type lighter flame. And really, there is no need to put a powerful blowtorch to the bowl! You just need to achieve about 200 °C max to vaporize everything you want from the herb! You don't even have to incinerate it, and you certainly don't need to evaporate the foil! The fact that the flame of a lighter is specified as reaching a temperature is not the point. This temperature is the absolute maximum, at the blue point of a torch-type flame in air; gently heating a bowl of weed, the heat is absorbed, spread out by conduction, re-radiated; the foil will not get that hot! My bowl gets replaced when the little pin holes clog with tars, not because the foil evaporated.

This is not to say that smoking off a beer/soda can will not produce nasty vapors; those cans are coated with paint on the outside and resins inside and you will definitely get some nasty vapors from heating those. But clean aluminum foil should not have any of these issues.

Just remember - heat the foil bowl gently, not even to the ignition point, and it is essentially vaping. Light it up so it is burning and it is definitely hotter, but you will still find tars at the bottom of a foil bowl (or on a screen) and not evaporated aluminum.

If you are really worried about the chemicals from aluminum foil or standard screens, just buy a little piece of platinum gauze (Platinum 298093 a 425 mg piece = 25 × 25 mm (that is about 1" square) for only $245. Platinum is quite inert, and has melting point of 1772°C (boiling point of 3827 °C), so it is absolutely not going to even melt with the hottest propane torch jet directly focussed onto it; you can flame it to clean the tars and it will not evaporate. (Disclaimer: I just invested in platinum gauze futures because I just know that there will be a run on this stuff now that the word is out....)

(Data from Steep Hill Labs).
THC-A Boiling Point: 105 °C (220°F)
∆-9-THC ("THC") Boiling Point: 157 °C (315°F)
CBD-A Ideal Decarboxylate Temperature: 120+°C (248°F)
CBD Boiling Point: 180 °C (356 °F)

Note that the decarboxlyation of THC-A is a range, but 110°C (about 230°F) is often used, and this is above the THC-A boiling point; it must be that THC-A more rapidly decarbs than evaporates, and the resultant ∆-9-THC has a higher boiling (vaporization) point and so it is not evaporated and lost at the decarb temperature.

So finally, to directly respond to comments in the thread:
1) I have seen this post before. You will get aluminum oxide poisioning from smoking aluminum foil.
1) Response. BS. Read the details of my post. Decide for yourself, but this is highly unlikely. Aluminum oxidizes before it evaporates in oxygen of air. Aluminum oxide is not going to evaporate with a butane lighter or even a propane-air torch.

2) The chemical reaction that happens when tinfoil is heated up is poisonous. Doing it on time is fine. Just don't do it regularly
2) Response. BS. Unless you are using actual tin, or aluminum, and grossly overheating it. Heat the bowl contents very gently.

3) Use a pebble! nature is your friend
3) Response. Sure. A pebble or "seamine" or the like is an excellent bowl constrictor. How can this be bad? I guess just make sure you have a quarts pebble; some rocks have chemicals you also wouldn't want to evaporate, but with the mass of the pebble it will heat slowly and this is not likely anyway. But the mass of the pebble/seamine keeps it cool and it will condense THC, CBD, and tar until it is heated enough to re-release them. A foil bowl liner/screen helps to spread the heat to the surround and the bottom of the bowl, unlike a seamine or pebble that remain cold longer. A foil bowl liner/screen does keep the glass bowl clean longer too. But a nice quartz pebble or glass seamine is probably the most inert and natural way to go.

4) Why is this even a question? OP you can get a pack of 10 for the price of a lighter, c'mon now. http://grasscity.com/glass-accessor...pack-of-stainless-steel-screens-3-4-inch.html
4) Response. Not a terrible idea at all. But the fretsome of you out there should know that Stainless Steel contains chromium and nickel and other things and so again, if extremely heated, this could still be an issue for you to worry about. As I say over and over, heat the bowl gently.

5) Not only is it very poisonous, but foil never decomposes. Think about mother nature first.
5) Response. After thinking about mother nature, think about simple recycling; and put down the hookah and push for recycling in your community if you don't have it already.

6) the heat level of the coals is not enough to release any toxins that might be contained in foil. using tinfoil for other purposes, definitely dangerous.
6) Response. This is pretty much my assessment, but again, we are talking about aluminum foil...

7) I dunno... Bic lighters burn around 2000* celsius, charcoal burns around 2500* Celsius...
7) Response. Read the details of my post and you will have to decide for yourself based on how you are using it. An air-only torch will burn at around 1,995 °C (3,623 °F), less if heat loss to the surroundings is taken into account. A BIC lighter, is not a focused flame as from a torch and you will not get to 1,995 °C, especially if you just back off a bit. Ditto for a torch type lighter; be gentle and vaporize, don't char the herb!

8) Aluminum doesn't offgas until it vaporizes, and the melting point is 660* celsius. The vape temp is super high, like 4400* F or something. (actually boiling point is 2,977°C, or 5,391°F)
8) Response. OK. I covered this in my post, explaining my thinking and the data. These details are correct, and my assessment is that this isn't an issue for a foil bowl gently heated.

9) I think it's fine. You won't get Alzheimer's. You won't get sick from it. Even if you did manage to "vape" aluminum you still get more from other sources...
9) Response. Probably all correct. Again, heat gently, not a powerful blowtorch and you are probably good. If there is black tar residue at the bottom of the bowl and the foil is not much changed in general appearance, then how would it evaporate significant aluminum?

10) Lol If you can throw down 20 bucks for some bud then you can pick up cheap ass brass screen or use nug plug.
10) Response. Brass screens. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc primarily, but it can have other components like lead and arsenic. The melting point is only a bit higher than Aluminum, but for the same reasons as I mentioned regarding aluminum, you are PROBABLY not vaporizing any significant amount of these chemicals. Again, heat the bowl gently. This is your best defense in all cases. Just resist the urge to put an intense blowtorch to the bowl. The cannabinoids vaporize at much lower temps than even igniting the herb, so do yourself a favor and heat gently. About the nug plug. I use an aluminum foil bowl since I use a very small quantity of herb that would fall through the bowl/stem tube without it, so people who are micro-dosing don't have the option of jamming a whole nug into the bowl, but it is such a nice idea....... I actually do have a piece of platinum screen (came from the detector electrode of a SO2 analyser that was being thrown away; it is 50mm x 100mm; this really is the ultimate) but I don't worry enough about aluminum foil bowl liner/screen to bother to cut and use the platinum gauze.

So that is it. You've got my opinions and some technical details to ponder. Hope this is of use to someone who stumbles onto this thread. Cheers!