The Straight Toke - THE Marijuana Blog

Since "Dave" found The Straight Toke with the intent of finding out "if smoking out of aluminum foil bowls is bad for you", I intend to help him answer that question.

Short answer: pure aluminium? Probably not. (But read on.)

Long answer: "aluminium foil"? I wouldn't...

Aluminium on its own has a melting point of 660.32 °C (that's 1220.58 °F), and a considerably higher boiling point. [source] Now unless you light your bowls with a volcano, chances are you're not going to melt the aluminium -- but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. "Aluminium foil" is not just aluminium; it's got other additives. While these additives are safe when the aluminium is used for wrapping food, etc., without knowing exactly what these additives are it's impossible to determine whether heating them and (potentially) breathing in their vapors might be harmful -- so it's probably not a good idea to do that. I've seen waterfalls made with an aluminium foil bowl before -- and as the foil heats up and gets charred, the smoke takes on a slightly yellowish tinge. Marijuana smoke doesn't do that on its own, so it's my guess that the foil released vapors of some kind. There's no guarantee that your foil will do this -- but again, without knowing exactly what makes up the aluminium foil, it's probably not a good idea to use it for "off-label" purposes.

Even if your foil doesn't give off any harmful vapors, it's still possible that the foil will flake or give off small particles of aluminium when heated. Aluminium is not something you want to ingest a lot of, and you especially don't want to breath small heated particles of it into your lungs. (Common sense dictates that breathing hot chunks of any metal into your lungs is a Very Bad Idea™.)

So is smoking from a bowl made from aluminium foil bad for you? Quite possibly. Given that there are other safer alternatives to using aluminium (such as cannibalizing a cheap wooden/glass piece), why take the risk?

Remember: smoke safe and have fun.

In peace,
Julius

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 2:33 am and is filed under Health/Medicine, Q/A. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.