One of my readers gave me this mug for my “Museum of Lead” collection because she had seen my blog post where I shared that “I even had readers in Saudi Arabia!” She thought those readers might be interested in knowing the test results of this unbranded souvenir mug (a gift that a friend of hers bought her in the airport in Riyadh a year or two ago).
Update: One of my readers asked what I meant by “of all places!” in the title. What I meant by that is that I would have never expected to be testing a souvenir from Saudi Arabia! (It’s so far away from Oregon, and so far I haven’t gotten anywhere near there in my travels – and, in fact, I came across this cup in Seattle!) I have tested things from Mexico, Japan, China – and all over the world, but in testing tens of thousands of items over the past 10 years this is the very first time I have tested something from Saudi Arabia!
When tested with an XRF instrument this mug had the following readings (with a test done for a minimum of at least 60 seconds):
Exterior painted decorative elements of the mug:
- Lead (Pb): 21,300 +/- 600 ppm
- Chromium (Cr): 3,340 +/- 173 ppm
- Tin (Sn): 35 +/- 29 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 18,100 +/- 600 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 447 +/- 65 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 3,094 +/- 275 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 1,317 +/- 121 ppm
- Platinum (Pt): 372 +/- 144 ppm
- Cobalt (Co): 3,598 +/- 239 ppm
- Magnesium (Mn): 2,705 +/- 343 ppm
White unpainted surface of mug (same as food surface/interior):
- Barium (Ba): 1,135 +/- 172 ppm
- Selenium (Se): 67 +/- 22 ppm
- Bromine (Br): 18 +/- 8 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 16,600 +/- 200 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 279 +/- 30 ppm
- Bismuth (Bi): 148 +/- 16 ppm
If a metal is not listed in the test result set it was not detected (with the XRF testing in “Consumer Goods” mode.)
As always, please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you for reading and for answering my questions.
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