Open-uri, rss parser and thread safe

Hi im using backgroundrb to schedule scraping of some sites and it uses
threading but the docs warn that not all libs are thread safe.

Some of my results are not expected when threading (but are when i dont
use threading) and Im using open-uri to grab my feeds. I tried looking
at the online docs but couldnt find anything regarding thread safety for
open-uri.

Does anyone know if its ok to use it in threads?

If not does anyone know of a fairly fast rss grabber/parser that is and
doable on a linux env.?