Vintage toy Ford “Front Drive” car, painted with red Lead paint: 723 ppm Lead (90 ppm & up is unsafe for kids)

Introduction (for those new to this website):

Tamara Rubin is a federal-award-winning independent advocate for consumer goods safety and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children, her sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005. Since 2009 Tamara has been using XRF testing (a scientific method used by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) to test consumer goods for toxicants (specifically heavy metals), including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Antimony, and Arsenic. All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable. Items are tested multiple times, to confirm the test results for each component. Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February of 2023.

Published: December 24, 2017
Updated: April 28, 2020

Ford “Front Drive” Toy Car, painted with Lead paint.

When tested with a high-precision XRF instrument designed for testing consumer goods (including toys) for the presence of heavy metals (like Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, and Arsenic) the painted metal toy car pictured here had the following readings.

• Lead (Pb): 723 +/- 54 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 25 +/- 8 ppm 

The amount of Lead considered toxic in the paint or coating of a modern item manufactured and intended for use by children is anything 90 ppm Lead or higher (tested with an XRF instrument).

Some additional related reading that may be of interest to my readers: 

• You can see more antique/vintage toys I have tested here.
• For #SaferChoices for your family, click here.
• You can see more toy cars I have tested at this link.
• To learn more about the testing I do, click here.

Tamara, have you tested others like this?

I purchased this at a local thrift store years ago — expressly with the purpose of reporting the test results here on this website. I have not written many articles with test results for toys of this type and era and I would love the opportunity to test more vintage-painted metal toy cars of this same period. If you have a collection and would be willing to send me a few to test and report on here on the site, I would be super thankful for the opportunity!

As always, thank you for reading and sharing my posts. 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama