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Topic: Galvanized Grates
From: Lon Squyres
Subject: Grill Material

Smoky,

I recently purchased a stainless steen pit with attached firebox. It does a fine job but I am a little uneasy about the galvanized grill or grate on which meat is placed. Is galvanized metal safe for this?

A friend of mine tells me that if it has to do with BBQ you will know it.

Thanks
Lon

Hi Lon,

Grill manufacturers do some dumb and stupid things but, surely they are not stupid enough to put galvanized meat grates in a cooking grill. Zinc is definitely not on the list of things you'd want to eat or inhale the fumes of. OSHA set the limits for Zinc chloride fumes at 1 mg/m3 (milligram per cubic meter of air) and at 5 mg/m3 for zinc oxide fumes. I don't know the lower temp. at which zinc would start outgassing, but I wouldn't want to trust it. Nor would I want the meat which I wanted to eat to be cozying up to in at elevated temps.

I would replace with cast iron, steel or stainless steel.

Who did this?

Luck,
Smoky