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Just to clarify, the iron in beach sand is naturally occurring. It  
comes from the breakdown of iron rich rock. If you've ever seen black  
swaths amid the lighter colored grains on beach sands, much of that is  
composed of heavier minerals including magnetite and often garnet.   
Those minerals have a higher density than the other mineral grains and  
segregate out just as the lighter items-- seaweeds and plastics also  
seem to converge on their own strand lines.

We have lots of sand to examine at the Collectors' Corner at the  
Science Museum of MN, and we show magnetite in sand by holding a  
magnet to the outside of sand vials.  People are pretty amazed to  
learn this.


On Mar 1, 2010, at 1:24 AM, Suzanne Mallery wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology  
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related  
> institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
>
> I assume the sand just has iron filings in it?  If so, you can find  
> the MSDS
> for iron filings by doing a search on those words.  It seems like  
> the main
> difference between sand boxes and this type of exhibit is that you're
> presumably encouraging people to use a magnet to concentrate the iron
> filings.  Technically iron filings are somewhat toxic if ingested or
> inhaled, although the doses seem to be a bit uncertain.  If a very  
> little
> kid swallowed or inhaled a lot of filings they might be able to do  
> some
> damage, but that seems fairly unlikely.  The MSDS describes them as
> "slightly hazardous" if inhaled or ingested or with eye or skin  
> contact (the
> eye and skin contact is just from the potential for mechanical  
> abrasion, but
> I'm not sure that's really much different from regular old sand).
>
> Suzanne Mallery
>
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Kate

Kate Hintz
Collections Gallery Manager
Science Museum of Minnesota
651-221-4508

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