Final spurt towards 2025! New Year’s Eve oracles are a popular ritual for the turn of the year. Now that lead casting has been banned due to its health risks, pewter casting sets are now available to buy. But are they really a good alternative? If you can not decide which one to try this year you can just go back to play blackjack at New Years eve.
For many years, lead casting was a popular tradition for New Year’s Eve. However, as lead is extremely toxic, lead casting sets have been banned since 2018 and lead casting is now history. A great alternative – because it is environmentally friendly and harmless to health – is wax casting. Recently, however, pewter casting sets have also become available in drugstores and online.
We wanted to know whether pewter casting is a healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to lead casting and which oracle game is the best choice.
Is pewter casting better than lead casting?
Experts recommend pewter casting as a non-toxic alternative to lead casting and advises: “However, only pure pewter, including food pewter, is truly lead-free.”
The Swiss Toxicological Information Center says: “Tin is toxicologically insignificant, it is hardly absorbed via the gastrointestinal tract and no tin vapor is produced when it melts over the candle.”
The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) explained in response to our inquiry: “There is no hazard classification for metallic tin as there is for lead. The BfR has no evidence that tin casting can be harmful to health.”
Lead casting: Banned for five years due to its toxicity.
Tin as a conflict raw material
However, tin has other downsides: The heavy metal is considered a conflict raw material. Kerstin Effers from the North Rhine-Westphalia consumer advice center explains: “Tin is a valuable raw material. Mining tin-containing ores pollutes the environment and destroys landscapes, e.g. the Kinnta Valley in Malaysia.”
Tin is used in large quantities for smartphones, tablets and other consumer electronics. The coveted metal often comes from illegal small-scale mines and is extracted under miserable conditions. Once it has been melted, it is almost impossible to trace its origin. The environmental damage caused by tin mining is enormous, as reported by ZDF. “The tin ore is slurried out of the ground using primitive methods. The mines turn the fertile soil into lunar landscapes where not a blade grows.”
Important when casting tin:
Tin should never get into the groundwater and should therefore not be disposed of with household waste. You should definitely take any leftover pewter or pewter figures to a recycling center. Even better: keep them for next year and melt them down again.
You should also be careful when casting pewter to avoid burns.
Children should only pour pewter together with their parents.
Pewter casting for New Year’s Eve: how it works
What you need for pewter casting:
- Pewter casting set with figures and melting spoon
- candle
- Fireproof bowl (e.g. made of metal)
- Cold water
And this is how it works:
Place the figure on the spoon and position it close to a large, strong candle flame. As soon as the pewter is liquid, you can pour it into the bowl of water with a flourish – but from a low height and with the greatest possible care.
Do not pour the hot pewter into the water directly in front of your face, but with as long an arm as possible. The pewter will solidify immediately in the cold water and can be removed after a few seconds.
The resulting figure then needs to be interpreted. It is best to hold the figure in front of a lamp and try to interpret the shadow: Cat, sickle or flower? The sets usually come with an interpretation guide. You can also find lists on the internet to help with the interpretation.
