Dollar Tree Store (Spring 2019) Garden Transplanter Trowel: Lead-Free (and just $1)

For those new to the Lead Safe Mama website:

Tamara Rubin is a multiple-federal-award-winning independent advocate for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety, and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children (two of her four sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005).

• Tamara owns and runs Lead Safe Mama, LLC — a unique community collaborative woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety.
• Since July of 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for five product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
• All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
• Please check out our press page to see some of the amazing coverage of our work so far this year!

I often share that because the Dollar store (Dollar Tree, Dollar General, etc.) have had so many violations in the past, the company is actually doing a good job of keeping Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, and Arsenic out of a lot of their products! This is one example of that.

When tested with an XRF instrument for a minimum of 30 seconds, the trowel pictured here had the following readings (metals not listed were not detected):

Metal part of spade:

• Barium (Ba): 12,700 +/- 1,400 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): 4,173 +/- 800 ppm
• Tin (Sn): 165 +/- 66 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 431 +/- 134 ppm
• Copper (Cu): 507 +/- 212 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 566,100 +/- 35,000 ppm
• Vanadium (V): 44,500 +/- 1,900 ppm
• Titanium (Ti): 88,200 +/- 2,900 ppm
• Molybdenum (Mo): 1,445 +/- 195 ppm
• Cobalt (Co): 16,200 +/- 1,700 ppm
• Manganese (Mn): 5,714 +/- 844 ppm

Blue rubberized “Foam Grip” handle:

• Bromine (Br): 35 +/- 6 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 2,787 +/- 86 ppm
• Copper (Cu): 334 +/- 40 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 1,270 +/- 107 ppm

As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for reading and sharing this work. 

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama