God was gracious and we averted danger this afternoon when my 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup exploded. Yes, exploded.
I accidentally hit my measuring cup against a bowl and a little piece of the pouring spout broke off. I placed the measuring cup on the counter while I finished putting the rest of the dishes away and about one minute later, we heard an exploding sound. Thankfully, neither the kids, our dog, or myself were injured, even though we were all within no more than 8 feet from the explosion.
It scared our dog out of the kitchen. The kids and I stood there in shock. We immediately knew we were most fortunate that none of us were hurt. God kept most of the millions of pieces of broken glass on the counter.
This evening I Googled "exploding Pyrex cup" and learned many other people have had similar experiences with glass Pyrex products. What little reading I did made me realize how fortunate we truly were. Some people had dishes explode while they were holding them or cleaning them. Some exploded right at the table.
I could be all wrong about this, but I can't help but think the company is knowingly putting out shoddy products. I think Pyrex (now owned by Corning and under the umbrella of yet another company called World Kitchens) is trying to rest on their past good reputation and is manufacturing an inferior product in order to make more money. (I have older Pyrex dishes I've used for more than 25 years. This measuring cup was not even 2 years old.) I fear that this happens all too frequently. A large company, far removed from their consumers, produces a product with inferior materials and inferior methods just so a few guys at the top can make more money.
It's bad enough that glass measuring cups are manufactured and sold this way. It's really scary when you realize that much of the food we buy at the grocery store isn't far removed from this same scenario. Big ag has the goal of producing the most food for the lowest price and showering their high paid execs with perks and high salaries. The consumer, high quality, a good name...these don't count for much anymore.
(The photo comes from a consumeraffairs.com article about exploding Pyrex dishes.)
4 comments:
Sunday, July 12, 2009
This evening I was sitting in my living room while baking some bread I heard this horrible crashing banging sound coming from my kitchen. My girlfriend came into the room and asked me " What was that?" We both looked around the house both inside and out to find out what the cause of the noise was. We couldn't find anything. When I went back to the kitchen to check on the bread I noticed some pieces of glass on the lid of a pot that was on the stove. I looked up and noticed that the door of the small cabinet above the range hood was slightly open. When I open the door I found that my 4 cup Pyrex measuring had shattered. Glass was every where inside the cabinet. I had not used this cup in quite awhile nor was the temperature inside the cabinet very high. Some of the pieces of glass had a kind of cloudy shattered look to them not unlike a shattered windshield. It was very odd.
I'm glad you both were OK. You obviously did the same thing I did...Google "exploding Pyrex," and that's how you found my blog entry.
Exploding Pyrex. Crazy, isn't it? Who knew?!
This morning I measured 1/4th cup of egg beaters into the glass measuring cup and poured it into the frying pan...no problem. I rinsed it in cool tap water and set it on the counter. Two hours later my wife and I heard a crashing explosion and found glass all over the counter and some on the floor. It had literally exploded. I began searching about this and found many horror stories. Consumer reports will hear about this. I checked on plastic and it has drawbacks and checked on metal and found little offered there.
Wow...I haven't written on my blog in forever. How funny that it was the Exploding Pyrex post that made me come here again! Glad you guys are okay. Needless to say, I have bought NO MORE Pyrex since our incident.
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