BLUEMOMENT

Be aware that the seemingly damp sugar in the coffee jar, placed in the galley with the coffee, milk & tea, may be Oxalic acid.

I was a little shaken and after swilling my mouth a lot & downing 4 pints of water I called my father (an industrial chemist) for advice. He dismissed it as an organic acid that was hardly poisonous at all & left me with the distinct impression that a real man would have gone back to finish off the mug. Anyway, he reckoned if I wasn't dead in 2 hours I'd be fine. We carried on and on arrival at Portsmouth I wasn't dead so that's rather good news.

The other good news is that one of the mugs is now very clean.

Well, Oxalic acid may well be an organic acid, but it's one of the more potent ones.

It's found in rhubarb, and it's why you shouldn't eat the leaves, and why the stalks take lots of sugar to make them nice, but if you aren't dead yet, don't worry but don't do it again.

I don't know where it goes for but your liver or kidneys are probably crying for mercy.

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Chiron: Westerly Centaur.
Cheers Bob.

Jeeze.............. Dio you actually swallow the stuff, or get rid of it pronto?

Mind you, I suppose it's great for cleaning the wallies.

I don't think any went down but I wasn't sure. The first mouthful tasted vile, but more like very-very-very strong coffee than anything else. I held it in my mouth for 3-4 seconds trying to work out what was going on. I concluded that I'd put salt instead of sugar in and gobbed it out. The amount that got gobbed out suggested I'd swallowed little or none.

There followed much mouth swilling and water drinking.

I wondered if the 'strong coffee' flavour was caused by the non-soluble acid preventing the coffee dissolving and therefore the first mouthful contained a lot of undiluted coffee.

You ought to feel lucky - I mix mine with wallpaper paste.

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eastcoastpilot.com - No, not that East Coast.
Anglian Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Dalriada and Alba

You should try washing down your cockpit with a dilute sugar mix ! Not good..........

Pretty good for non slip though.

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eastcoastpilot.com - No, not that East Coast.
Anglian Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Dalriada and Alba