>"Gios Blue" contains cobalt, highly toxic and indeed illegal in paint in
>most places.
Not true... cobalt is a common and easy to get pigment and is used all over the place. It's replacement in many blues is motivated not by toxicity, but by expense. Cobalt oxide from my ceramic supplier was going for $35 a pound last I checked and cobalt carbonate was only a few bucks cheaper (compare this to well under $10 a pound for almost everything else, copper carbonate, chrome oxide, etc.)
As to cobalt being highly toxic, no more so than most other metal oxides used as pigments. I am equally careful of chrome, cadmium, copper, vanadium, etc... don't ingest the stuff in glaze/paint form and wear a respirator when working with it in dry powdered form. Most of the oxides and carbonates are safe with these simple precautions (the chlorides on the other hand are a different ball of wax... they can be absorbed right thru the skin)
Bob Hovey
Columbus, GA