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Comment by osense | Hacker News Reader

As an aside, the article mentions:

> After the material is processed and carved into the desired shape, it is coated in *mineral oil* to extend its lifetime.

I was thinking how, surely, mineral oil isn't food-safe and well-fit for use on a utensil. However, it turns out that while low-grade mineral oil is proved carcinogenic, the high-grade version is not believed to be so, unless dispersed in a mist. And apparently, we consume quite a bit of mineral oil due to it's use in the baking industry (though that figure comes from 1961)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_oil#Food_preparation

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Mineral oil can be found in most pharmacies marketed as a laxative. It's a common oil to use for cutting boards and other applications in proximity to food.

Right, another instance of where the mineral product is to be much preferred over the so-called natural one is with turpentine.

Mineral turpentine is to be much preferred over the natural one because the latter contains organic wood terpenes many if which are toxic and proven carcinogens - after all it stands to reason that they're dangerous, as trees have evolved to produce them to fend off or poison insects that attack them.

I find it somewhat distressing to see so many carpenters and woodworkers using terpenes-laced turpentine because they believe 'natural' is better.

It's time this dangerous myth was dispelled.

It depends on what you mean by mineral oil. Without definition it's about as useless as saying I've painted something in 'color' rather than specifying what color one used.

Whilst flammable, and for the simplest ones, even explosive - most small straight-chained alkanes as often found in mineral oils are reasonably innocuous in that they're not considered organically poisonous (at least in small amounts), however that can change greatly the moment you add certain additives to change their properties (as is often done in commercial products).

The most notorious and outrageous example being when Thomas Midgley Jr added tetraethyllead to gasoline/petroleum in the 1920s thus managing to poison most of the population to at least some extent.

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