THE CERAMIC INDUSTRY
Risk is present in several branches of the ceramic industry. It is greatest in glazing earthenware, but not infrequent also in the porcelain and glass industries. It is impossible to deal with the extensive literature on this subject exhaustively. A comprehensive and detailed survey of lead poisoning in the ceramic industry on the Continent is that by Kaup. Distinction is made between leadless glazes which melt at high temperature and lead glazes which have the advantage of a low melting-point. Galena and litharge are used in the preparation of glazes for common earthenware and red and white lead for ware of better quality. Distinction has to be made between a lead silicious glaze for pottery ware, a lead and boric acid glaze for stoneware, and a lead and zinc oxide glaze for ordinary faience and stoneware. Seegar, the celebrated expert, praises the advantage of lead glaze and the use of lead in the ceramic industry—it is indeed practically indispensable—and speaks of the poisonous nature of lead as its only fault. The components of the glaze must have definite relation to the hardness or softness of the body. The higher the proportion of silicic acid in the glaze the harder the firing it will stand; the more the flux materials are in excess the lower will the melting point be.
The most important flux materials are, arranged in order of decreasing fusibility, lead oxide, baryta, potash, soda, zinc oxide, chalk, magnesia, and clay.
The glaze is made by first mixing the ingredients dry, and then either fritting them by fluxing in a reverberatory furnace and finally grinding them very finely in water or using the raw material direct. In the fritting process in the case of the lead glazes the soluble lead compounds become converted into less soluble lead silicates and double silicates.
The glaze is applied in different ways—dipping, pouring, dusting, blowing, and volatilising. Air-dried and biscuited objects are dipped; pouring the glaze on is practised in coarse ware, roofing-tiles, &c.; dusting (with dry finely ground glaze, litharge, or red lead) also in common ware; glaze-blowing (aerographing) and glaze dusting on porcelain. In these processes machines can be used. Bricks are only occasionally glazed with glazes of felspar, kaolin, and quartz, to which lead oxide is often added in very large quantity. Lead poisoning in brick works in view of the infrequent use of lead is not common, but when lead is used cases are frequent. Kaup quotes several cases from the factory inspectors’ reports: thus in three roof-tiling works examination by the district physician showed that almost all the workers were affected.
Coarse ware pottery is made of pervious non-transparent clay with earthy fracture—only a portion of this class of ware (stoneware) is made of raw materials which fire white. Such ware generally receives a colourless glaze. The clay is shaped on the potter’s wheel, and is then fired once or, in the better qualities, twice.
Grinding the ingredients of the glaze is still often done in primitive fashion in mortars. The glaze is usually composed of lead oxide and sand, often with addition of other lead compounds as, for example, in quite common ware, of equal parts of litharge, clay, and coarse sand. Sometimes, instead of litharge, galena (lead sulphide) or, with better qualities of ware, red lead or ‘lead ashes’ are used.
The grinding of the glazes in open mills or even in mortars constitutes a great danger which can be prevented almost entirely by grinding in ball mills. The glaze material is next mixed with water, and the articles are either dipped into the creamy mass or this is poured over them. In doing this the hands, clothes, and floors are splashed. The more dangerous dusting-on of glaze is rarely practised. Occasionally mechanical appliances take the place of hand dipping. Placing the ware in the glost oven is done without placing it first in saggars.
In the better qualities of pottery cooking utensils, which are fired twice, a less fusible fritted lead glaze is generally used. Coloured glaze contains, besides the colouring metallic oxides, 30-40 per cent. of litharge or red lead.