[ThomasPowers]

One other big nasty is beryllium dust so you knifemakers be carefull when you grind scrap bronze and avoid stuff that may be Be containing. I had a beautiful colour bronze wrench I was going to make into a knife guard once---until I read about the effects of beryllium poisoning. Then I trashed it immediately as Be bronze was used for non-sparking tools!

Talking with a friend who was a professional brass founder he told me that *1* piece in a traincar load of brass scrap that tested positive for Be was grounds for not accepting the entire load *and* they had to decontaminate the entire scrap area---that was a tad large as they took in train carloads of scrap.