Oxygen Absorbers

Oxygen absorbers they call 'em. A colleague of mine bought some peanuts coated with coconut; one of those Thai nuts in a tin snack. Anyway, today she came in all excited asking us what we thought the dessiccant in the tin of nuts... and silica gel is not one of the guesses to be made.

Turned out, it was iron filings. Only that they have repackaged it and call it Oxygen Absorbers... iron absorbs oxygen and becomes rust???

Now I don't know whether iron filings are used as desiccant as a general rule since my little knowledge of what remains of my Chemistry is that iron filings are generally waste products. We use it to teach the direction of magnetic fields. My check with Wiki confirmed that.

We did our own little experiment to confirm that it was iron filings. The green stick is a magnet and those coarse and powdery black stuff literally flew to the magnet and clung there... totally confirmed it.

I don't know how safe iron filings are as desiccant but I did a read up. Turns out that if you smash your cornflakes, (Yup! your Kellog's Cornflakes!) and stir it with a magnet, you'll be drawing out iron filings. LOL! They really fortify our cornflakes with iron, the real one! LOL!