Bone Black
Dirty Jobs is a reality television show on Discovery Show which aims to find the dirtiest job.
And the episode just featured was titled “Bone Black” for a reason.
Mike Rowe the host for the show, sure found a job that was hard to beat, at the Downriver at Ebonex. A cow bone processing plant in Melvindale.
The Discovery Channel supposedly found the plant online, and according to the Downriver News-Herald, contacted them to be on the show.
Shelly Toenniges who is the Ebonex office manager, said that the company thought about contacting the show, but debated whether being on it would force them to give up secrets of their process.
Employee Chris Harper showed Rowe his first job as he worked throughout the day at Ebonex, by putting a very unhappy Rowe in a dust collector. Harper said, “The poor cameraman was lying on his back inside this thing, and Rowe just kept saying that it was the dirtiest job ever.”
Rowe actually deemed the cow bone processing plant one of the “top two dirtiest jobs he’s ever done.”
The plant deals with the “blackened” or charred cow bone dust which is primarily used as a pigment such as ink or wood stain, but is also used in the process of refining sugar and stripping it of it’s natural color.
The powder is often on the workers clothes and skin for days after and is ironically used to make white sugar.
Dirty Jobs will air at 9 p.m. on Feb. 9 on the Discovery Channel.