Vintage Plastic Fisher Price Doll. Please don’t let your children play with these dolls. 90 ppm Lead is unsafe for kids.
The amount of Lead that is considered toxic (and illegal / unsafe) in newly manufactured items intended for use by children today, is anything over 90 ppm Lead in the paint or coating and anything over 100 ppm Lead in the substrate. Here’s a table from a recent (2015) study about toxicants found in vintage plastic toys. If you click on the table it will take you to a post with a link to the full study.
When tested with an XRF instrument this little doll had the following readings (tests done for a minimum of 60 seconds each, metals not detected in consumer goods mode are not listed).
Brown Plastic Hair:
- Lead (Pb): 539 +/- 12 ppm
- Cadmium (Cd): 50 +/- 7 ppm
- Mercury (Hg): 8 +/- 3 ppm
- Arsenic (As): 23 +/- 9 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 194 +/- 69 ppm
- Chromium (Cr): 128 +/- 30 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 21 +/- 4 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 566 +/- 24 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 870 +/- 161 ppm
Pink Plastic Face:
- Lead (Pb): 50 +/- 5 ppm
- Cadmium (Cd): 95 +/- 9 ppm
- Mercury (Hg): 14 +/- 4 ppm
- Arsenic (As): Non-detect
- Barium (Ba): 171 +/- 88 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 84 +/- 7 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 2,234 +/- 238 ppm
Green Plastic Body/Dress:
- Lead (Pb): 7,413 +/- 90 ppm
- Cadmium (Cd): Non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): Non-detect
- Arsenic (As): 107 +/- 42 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 212 +/- 85 ppm
- Chromium (Cr): 973 +/- 61 ppm
- Antimony (Sb): 152 +/- 22 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 392 +/- 14 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 646 +/- 180 ppm
These vintage Fisher Price Little People are more of a concern than some of the larger pieces (like houses and buses) because they can be easily popped in the mouth of a child during the course of normal play, and the faces are often painted with Lead paint, which can easily be ingested by a child. It just takes a microscopic amount of Lead to poison a child. You can read more about that here.
To see more vintage Fisher Price toys that I have tested, click here.
Thank you for reading and for sharing my posts.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
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Do you know if current fisher price toys are safe lead and cadmium wise? The company won’t give me a direct answer….
Hi D.
The new toys by all major brands (including new Fisher Price toys) will be free of toxic heavy metals.Specifically they test negative for Lead, Mercury, Cadmium and Arsenic. I would feel comfortable buying new Fisher price toys for my children.
Tamara
Perfect! Thank you SO MUCH.
I am concerned about a circa 1980 Kermit the Frog Fisher Price stuffed toy with large plastic eyes that have black detailing on them. Did most such detailing contain lead paint like the Fisher Price Little People faces do?
That’s so sad! Those were some of my favorite toys growing up. I still have them–40 years later! They are in my shed. What other toys have lead paint? Have you tested the 1930s Composition dolls?
That’s awful FP won’t be straight with you. I once emailed Armstrong flooring, and they bluntly told me they had asbestos in their linoleum up til 1984.
Nice they told me right out, so you could know what you’re dealing with. Most of that stuff isn’t bad until it starts to come apart OR you go mess with it when you don’t have to.
Can you tell us which marbles are lead-free?
I have not found any yet.
Thank you Tamara for this valuable information. Unfortunately, I found this a bit late and my son was playing with some of these toys recently. I got rid of them as soon as I found your site! It’s frustrating and shocking that the CDC does not state that old toys are a risk for lead poisoning.