Twinkie, Deconstructed Read Online Free PDF Page A

plants to smithereens.
    Every point where flour dust could escape is designed to minimize the risk of explosion. Vacuums are the first line of defense, and some areas feature negative air pressure, so dust clouds can’t form. The doors close and seal tightly to maintain high air pressure, and casual visitors are unwelcome (I’m personally guided and wearing a bright red, color-coded hard hat indicating my security clearance).
    Other than Alexander and me, there seem to be only a few technicians in the plant. This is one of the most automated of professions—the first fully automated manufacturing process in history, industry organizations are fond of boasting—and it seems appropriate, this modern melding of industry and agriculture. Flour is one of the very basic foodstuffs. It is the primary ingredient in the staff of life as well as the stuff of Twinkies. But there is a lot more to cake flour than just ground-up grass, probably a lot more than you ever imagined. Before it can be shipped out, it requires the addition of bleach (yes, bleach) and vitamins, both of which are completely industrial products, in stark contrast to their natural, grassy partner.

CHAPTER 3
    Bleach
    W hen my kids ask me if the same bleach we use on our laundry is used to bleach flour, I have to say, “Well, yes, sort of. Eeewwww” is the studied (and, let’s face it, expected) response. Household bleach and flour bleach share the same essential ingredient—chlorine. That must mean that Twinkie flour—that nice, clean, familiar cake flour—is then bleached with poisonous chlorine gas. But don’t worry, it’s OK to eat (we think). It’s just hard to see where it’s made. To make chlorine for bleaching cake flour or disinfecting water or making plastic pipes, you need just two raw ingredients: tons of salt and a whole lot of electricity. And both salt and hydroelectric power are found in abundance around Niagara Falls, New York.
    The chloralkali, or chlor/alkali, industry—that’s the term for chlorine makers—is one of the largest industries in the world, and chlorine is the tenth most common chemical made in the United States, so a lot of companies should be making chlorine up there, and were, until a few years ago. One would think it would be easy to find a few giant chlorine companies, but many of the people in the flour industry who use it are unable to say where it is made or by whom. It turns out that most have gone out of business (strange, given that chlorine is such a commonly used chemical) or have merged into various conglomerates (alas, not as strange). Many were victims, to be sure, of bad management, but safety and other government regulations have no doubt taken their toll on the smaller players.
    I did find two very helpful companies, though. Nearly a hundred years ago, predecessors of what is now OxyChem ® , Occidental Petroleum Corporation’s chemical subsidiary, the largest merchant marketer of chlorine in the United States, located what is now one of its biggest plants in the previously mentioned area of Niagara Falls, New York. PPG Industries, formerly Pittsburgh Plate Glass, has one across the nearby border, in Beauharnois, near Montreal, and several on the Gulf Coast, notably Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Beaumont, Texas. These plants either sit directly atop salt deposits (as in the Gulf Coast, where most of our chlorine is now produced) or next to inexpensive hydropower (Quebec). Chlorine industry spokespeople claim that they use 1 percent of the electricity generated in the United States, to make approximately 26 billion pounds of chlorine each year. They also say that they use 44 billion pounds of table salt to do this, enough to cover, in one of the more imaginative metaphors ever conceived, almost three hundred large orders of french fries for each American, every day.
    The term “chloralkali” is deeply rooted in language, not science. The word “chlorine” itself comes from Greek for “greenish