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[Nordlicht]

As always I have no clue about the topic, but after seeing the Bismuth Suggestion, I think this Forum needs such a thread. So I just copy something from the internet for starters.

Luz Opal With Galaxy Inside

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bismuth

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Black Opal

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Azurite

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Cactus Amethyst

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Blue Diamond

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☼

[Maximum Spin]

Luz Opal With Galaxy Inside

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I swear I saw that on a cat's collar once.

[Dostoevsky]

Spoiler: It's just selenite, but... (click to show/hide)

[Iduno]

Luz Opal With Galaxy Inside

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Aw yeah, that's the stuff.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Considering whether to use "report to moderator" on this thread...

[Iduno]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Chalcanthite. Look, but don't touch. Because of the severe copper poisoning it causes.

[A_Curious_Cat]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Chalcanthite. Look, but don't touch. Because of the severe copper poisoning it causes.

Nice.  Apparently it tastes sweet.  Kinda like lead (II) acetate!

(also, are you sure it causes poisoning via touch?  The information I have says it has to be ingested...)

[Maximum Spin]

(also, are you sure it causes poisoning via touch?  The information I have says it has to be ingested...)

It doesn't and can't, no. In fact, you'd have to ingest a fairly significant amount to get copper poisoning because the body is pretty good at handling copper (a normal and important biological trace metal). Not necessarily a HUGE amount, but, like, enough that you would have to know you were making bad choices.

[nenjin]

(also, are you sure it causes poisoning via touch?  The information I have says it has to be ingested...)

It doesn't and can't, no. In fact, you'd have to ingest a fairly significant amount to get copper poisoning because the body is pretty good at handling copper (a normal and important biological trace metal). Not necessarily a HUGE amount, but, like, enough that you would have to know you were making bad choices.

Cooking with copper cookware is enough to give you copper poisoning.

[Maximum Spin]

Cooking with copper cookware is enough to give you copper poisoning.

Yes, but you have to do it quite a bit, and it requires acidic foods that can leach the copper out, and this mostly seems to affect people who have a defect with copper processing, which is why copper cookware is still a common and usually safe thing... how does that contradict what I said at all?

The stone in question is a copper sulfate, anyway, which is very different biologically from copper metal. The effects would be different, and the relevant doses are different.

[nenjin]

"ingesting a significant amount of copper."

I'd qualify eating something cooked in copper as not even being a significant amount. There's a reason modern copper cookware is coated in other metals on the actual cooking surface so it doesn't release anything into your food. If just cooking something in copper cookware is enough to cause it in some people (it will also just make otherwise normal people feel "sick") I'd say that qualifies as "trace amounts", not even direct ingestion, by most people's standards.

[Maximum Spin]

"ingesting a significant amount of copper."

I'd qualify eating something cooked in copper as not even being a significant amount. There's a reason modern copper cookware is coated in other metals on the actual cooking surface so it doesn't release anything into your food. If just cooking something in copper cookware is enough to cause it in some people (it will also just make otherwise normal people feel "sick") I'd say that qualifies as "trace amounts", not even direct ingestion, by most people's standards.

The thing is, "just cooking something in copper cookware" doesn't, per se, cause copper poisoning: it's leaving acidic solutions in 'pure' copper cookware for extended periods of time, so that they can leach significant amounts of copper into the food. Under normal intended use conditions, 'pure' copper cookware is safe, which is why it's still sold. (It's not "modern" copper cookware that is coated, it's just copper cookware, both past and present, intended for things like cooking sauces where the risk actually does come up.)

For comparison, in the case of a copper sulfate mineral, breaking a chunk of the rock off and eating it is "you would have to know you were making bad choices", as would be, say, grinding it up to season your food. Licking the rock, well, you'd have to know you were making bad choices there too, but you can reasonably expect not to die of it.

The important thing to take away here is that it actually is hard to get copper poisoning. You have to work at it.

[Starver]

I'll give it a good go, then!

(A few months ago... not counting the last few months of nullness... I went to an exhibition that had a whole large table-cabinet display full of the most marvelous minerals. All kinds: stibnites, quartzes (variously intruded), pyrites, geodes, you name it... Unfortunately they had a rather strict no-photography policy, as I thought at the time that you lot would be very interested.)

[Cathar]

A quick research on food contact on copper reveals that copper by itself is not poisonous. The EU tolerable windows of copper ingestion is 0.5mg of copper per kg of mass, so a male weighting 80kg can ingest 4cg of copper safely, making it pretty much a non poisonous metal.
The problem is copper tableware are usually alloys, and some alloys use other metals with poor food contact properties or outright poisonous (lead, cadmium etc). The problem as far as I can tell is, copper being a rare metal for table ware, it is unevenly tested for its food contact property and remains mostly unregulated.

TLDR the problem is not copper, it's the other metals in the alloys, and the fact that copper tableware are unevenly tested for those. If you get saturnism after putting a chinese copper spoon in your mouth, the problem aint copper, it's the lead it's alloyed with and hasn't be vetted by testlabs for food contact

[Maximum Spin]

Copper toxicity per se is a real thing, it's just very rare. One of the key signs of copper toxicity as opposed to other metal toxicities is a buildup of copper deposits in the iris, forming a brownish ring.