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
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