Next time you have a fish fry, use your old newspapers instead of paper towels/napkins to drain your fish and fries on.

You can also use newspaper to serve the fish and fries to your friends.

Redfin No Thanks!!! I get enough lead on my hands just reading the newspaper

I have no desires to ingest it also!!!!

We have been doing this for years. Unless you drink the grease off the papers or actually eat the paper you don't have to work about ink or lead problems. You'll have a better chance of lead poisoning from chewing on a pencil!

I use news paper with one layer of paper towels. Old trick Grandad taught me.

I use brown paper sacks from the grocery...you should see the looks of the sackers face when i have a cart full of food and I say paper please Now, i just ask them for about 5 or 6 each time i check out. I put paper towels under them.

This fish fry I donated about 300 filets to, they had foil lined styrofoam ice chests and put the fish in them, man they stayed warm for a long time, but they drained them on brown paper sacks.

Newspapers have been using soy-based inks for about the last ten years - no worries about lead. The only thing I would steer clear of are the ad inserts with the color photos - the regular paper is fine.

Redfin, I use nothing but newspaper. Contrary to Oldtimer's concept, the printing of papers for public use are strictly regulated and use vegetable dye based inks. There is no lead whatsoever in news ink. We save all our old papers just for this use.

What I haven't figured out is, I still go through an awful lot of paper towels!

Fat Dog, I did not know that but I sure would like to see some verification of your statement somehow though, Do you suppose I could call the dmn and someone would actually know about this???

Also do you know how long this process has been used because as all teens did when young I used to deliver papers so this makes me even more courious

All this talk made me have to go look, here are a few sites that talk about the ink....We try to do the newspaper then papertowel on top whenever we remember, picks up so much more that way.
Rick

http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/database/chem/industrial/c00006d.html

http://ohioline.osu.edu/cd-fact/0122.html

http://ohioline.osu.edu/cd-fact/0136.html

oldtimer, no offense intended, in the days prior to about 1970, you would have been right. being an old print guy, I remember when this came to be, and we were all happy about it. Use newsprint for anything you want, it is nearly sterile.

" lead, which can be absorbed through the skin, was banned as an ingredient in ink by the EPA in 1985 and is, therefore, no longer a threat. Stall trials concluded that the ink rub-off from printed newsprint was not a concern for animals."

an excerpt from the ohio university so well contributed by ricrod. Thanks ricrod!