Rocks and Minerals B/C

[Entomology]

First year doing rocks; apologies if I sound stupid.

Should talc be considered as a health problem? There are a lot of sources saying stuff about cancer and respiratory disease etc etc. I'm a bit worried if the talc we use in the classroom is safe to touch excessively (which I did for an hour yesterday). I'm not sure of the exact source of our talc, It may or may not be from the official kits (most likely not).

Thanks!

[Person]

First year doing rocks; apologies if I sound stupid.

Should talc be considered as a health problem? There are a lot of sources saying stuff about cancer and respiratory disease etc etc. I'm a bit worried if the talc we use in the classroom is safe to touch excessively (which I did for an hour yesterday). I'm not sure of the exact source of our talc, It may or may not be from the official kits (most likely not).

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure inhaling too much of it can be dangerous, but I'm not sure if it can be absorbed through the skin.

[Unome]

First year doing rocks; apologies if I sound stupid.

Should talc be considered as a health problem? There are a lot of sources saying stuff about cancer and respiratory disease etc etc. I'm a bit worried if the talc we use in the classroom is safe to touch excessively (which I did for an hour yesterday). I'm not sure of the exact source of our talc, It may or may not be from the official kits (most likely not).

Thanks!

cosmetic grade talc containing no asbestos-like fibres was correlated with tumor formation in rats forced to inhale talc for 6 hours a day, five days a week over at least 113 weeks

I hope you aren't using them that intensively

[-Groundhog-]

First time doing this event. About how much of the information should you be able to know off the top of your head?

[tyasasvi]

Does anyone know a really good field guide I should base my notes off of? Can someone let me just have a peak at their binder cause I never chose an event where you could use a binder? Is their a limit on how many pages the binder may have?

[Unome]

Does anyone know a really good field guide I should base my notes off of? Can someone let me just have a peak at their binder cause I never chose an event where you could use a binder? Is their a limit on how many pages the binder may have?

There's a pretty good description of field guides on the wiki; others on this thread can probably give you more info about this as well. The rules manual specifically mentions that the binder may be any size (this is almost universally taken to mean any amount of pages as well, and it would take a lot of time for event supervisors to check); historically there has never been a limit on binder size for events allowing a binder, and this seems likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

[Cherrie_Lan]

Is there a good way to distinguish between pink mica and lepidolite? Thanks!

[Magikarpmaster629]

Is there a good way to distinguish between pink mica and lepidolite? Thanks!

To my knowledge the pink color in lepidolite is from the element lithium, so they are the exact same thing (I could be wrong on that). Do you have any images you could post on here?

[Cherrie_Lan]

Sorry, I meant pink muscovite ^^"

I was working on my lepidolite page using this: http://www.minerals.net/mineral/lepidolite.aspx

Then when I got to the distinguishing similar minerals part, all it said for Pink Muscovite was "Very difficult to distinguish from Lepidolite." But no advice on how to distinguish them apart.

So I wondering if any of you guys could help me with it

[whovian11]

What is he best thing to put in our binder?