Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 12:35:10 -0400 From: Lara Sutherland <sutherland@no.address> Organization: INFORM, Inc., 120 Wall St., New York, NY 10005 To: Marlyn Aguilar <MAguilar@no.address> Cc: p2tech@no.address Subject: Re: Cooking thermometers--yes, mercury-free available
> I know there are replacements for oven thermometers, but wasn't
> sure about the cooking oil ones. I did a brief search on the P2Rx topic hub and didn't find anything. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Marlyn,
Yes, non-mercury cooking thermometers are available in a wide variety of models for most uses. Taylor Corporation makes many different non-mercury cooking thermometers, and when I talked to them
in November of 2001, they suggested you call them at 800-225-4834, describe your specific intended use of the thermometer and your accuracy requirements, and they can tell you the best mercury-free
model for your use.
You can see some of Taylor's products on their website at
http://www.taylorusa.com/foodsvc/food.html. ( Not all their products are featured on the website.) None of the thermometers listed is specifically called an "oil thermometer" but some are "candy thermometers," which may be a similar type of use. They make coil bi-therm dial thermometers,
infrared thermometers, and digital thermometers. (They also continue to make mercury thermometers.) Taylor's website gives an explanation of the mechanism of each type and how they work.
My Taylor contact told me that all dial thermometers they currently manufacture are mercury-free, but this is not necessarily true for all dial thermometers made in the past, so don't assume all the dial thermometers you see have no mercury.
To give you an idea of prices, here is what Grainger Corp. sells (which is not Taylor's entire line). The links below will bring you to a picture of the thermometer, as well as temperature range and other information:
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/productdetail.jsp?xi=xi&ItemId=1611770868 Grainger Item 4JZ13 Price $14.55 Cooking Candy Thermometer (Dial) #5911 from Taylor
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/productdetail.jsp?xi=xi&ItemId=1611770870 Grainger Item 4JZ16 Price $10.39 Cooking Oven Thermometer (Dial) #5995 from Taylor
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/productdetail.jsp?xi=xi&ItemId=1611625150 Grainger Item 4JZ20 Price $43.70 Cooking Dial Thermometer with Stem #6246 from Taylor
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/productdetail.jsp?xi=xi&ItemId=1611770871 Grainger Item 4JZ19 Price $22.87 Cooking Grill Thermometer (Dial) #6020 from Taylor
The great thing about Grainger is that any product with mercury will have an MSDS sheet indicating that mercury is in the product (for an example, see the thermometer at http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/productdetail.jsp?xi=xi&ItemId=1611770869 )
Cooking.com also carries non-mercury Taylor thermometers (see
http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodli.asp?Keywords=thermometers ), as well as other brands, but you would have to contact the manufacturer to ensure that other brands of dial thermometers were mercury-free. (As you may already know, vendors often assume something has no mercury, and since a thermometer is not a chemical, it is not required to have an MSDS sheet, so the vendors may not even know--it's always best to contact the manufacturer to verify if a thermometer is mercury free.)
Lara -- Lara Sutherland Senior Research Associate INFORM, Inc. Phone: 303-377-7048 Fax: 303-377-7049 Sutherland@no.address http://www.informinc.org/p3_00.php
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