What to do if you are a blogger (reseller) who has been selling Ceramcor/ Xtrema with the understanding they are metals-free

 

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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 2009, Tamara has been conducting XRF testing (a scientific testing method) using the exact instrumentation employed by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to test consumer goods for toxicants (specifically heavy metals — including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Antimony, and Arsenic).
• Since July of 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for 5 product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
• All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
• Items that Lead Safe Mama, LLC reports on are tested multiple times to confirm the results published (for each component tested).
• Recent notable press… There has been too much to mention already in 2024! Please check out our press page to see some of the amazing coverage of our work so far this year!

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• Please click through this link to learn more about the testing methodology used for the test results discussed and reported on this website.

• To learn more about the Lead Safe Mama, LLC community collaborative business model, click here.

• To learn more about the concern for/potential impacts of Leaded glaze/Lead painted decorations on dishware, including potential for health impacts, click here.

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This has been written in response to Xtrema’s letter sent to resellers on Friday 5/24/2019. That letter is linked (in a printable downloadable PDF) below.

Important background points to understand:

1. XRF testing is entirely distinct from leach testing.
2. XRF test results are not somehow magically negated by leach testing results.
3. If a product passes leach testing for metals, that does not somehow magically mean it is “metals-free”; it only means that it passes leach testing for metals at the time of manufacture (or at the time was tested).

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For Context: My original posts with my findings of metals in Xtrema products:

• Here is the original post about these Ceramcor / Xtrema / Mercola pans having Lead from June 9, 2017 – there are more than 140 comments — and the comment thread is actually quite entertaining, so you might like to sit down in a cozy spot with a glass of wine to read that one.
• Here’s a follow-up post from August 2018 in which I shared the full metals breakdown (as detectable with an XRF) for these Xtrema Ceramcor Mercola pots and pans.Metals found included: Lead, Barium, Selenium, Vanadium, Titanium, Tin, Cadmium, Cobalt, Iron, Nickel, Chromium, Bismuth, Manganese, and Zinc.
• Click here for a summary post about the 14 specific metals found – including which were found in the bare ceramic substrate and which were found the black glazed surface.This post clearly explains how it can be reasonably deduced that many of the metals are a significant added ingredient in the glaze and not some alleged “naturally occurring” artifact of the base ceramic — as Xtrema claims.

These posts above ^^^ also discuss at length WHY it is a problem that these pans are positive for metals. The considerations I bring up in the posts linked above are concerns that go beyond whether or not a product passes or fails leach testing – focusing also on the greater environmental impacts of producing products that contain toxicants like heavy metals. The work I do has never been (and will likely never be) about merely determining whether a product passes leach testing.

My work (in the consumer goods arena) is only ever about discovering and disclosing neurotoxic metals detected in consumer goods using XRF technology — so that consumers can have unbiased information (without corporate influence) to use as a basis for making educated choices about what they bring into their homes (taking into account all of the potential environmental impacts of the product throughout its life  – from mining to manufacturing reliant on global supply chains to distribution through end-of-life disposal or recycling/reclamation handling — not simply the question of direct immediate impacts of the finished product on the end user and their family.)

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The fundamental concern with these Xtrema / Ceramcor / Mercola pans:

1. The company has historically claimed the products are “metals-free”
2. The company has enlisted bloggers as resellers with a foundation of the relationship being the understanding that the products are metals-free. The company used this alleged feature as an important promise (a unique selling proposition) – distinguishing their product from other pots and pans.
3. Xtrema then used the reputations and readership base of any affiliate/ reseller bloggers (and most importantly, the culture of trust bloggers have established with their readers) to sell their products.
4. The products (simply put) are definitely not “metals free,” and apparently never have been.
5. This has been false advertising — at least since 2017 when they learned of my findings and chose to do almost nothing in response (in terms of possible options like alerting their customers of the problem, changing the formulation of their products, changing their marketing or language about the products, or issuing refunds or recalls on the products).

That’s it.

It’s not a question about leaching or not leaching (or bio-availability) of metals.

The big concern right now is a simple question of truth-in-advertising (or the lack thereof) and doing the responsible thing in cleaning up a mess over current/previous/historic communications that have given customers (and bloggers) the wrong impression about the Xtrema products.

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What to do if you are a blogger who has been selling Ceramcor/ Xtrema thinking they are metals free:

Bloggers selling their product can correct the problem and set the record straight (and stop enabling/engaging in false advertising) by simply doing the following:

• Remove your product reviews with claims that these products are “metals-free” or “Lead-free” (or simply remove any “metals-free” or “Lead-free” language from these reviews).
• Write a quick apology post to your readers saying you were misled by the manufacturer –  believing (based on his statements) that these products do not contain heavy metals – when, in fact, they do.
• Feel free to emphasize that the manufacturer had apparently confused the scientific distinctions “non-leaching for Lead” and “Lead-free” (and “non-leaching for metals” vs. “metals free”) and it is your understanding that while the pans are non-leaching at the time of manufacture (based on testing provided by the manufacturer) they are not actually “metals-free.”
• If you are one of these bloggers and need help with that communication, please let me know. I would be happy to help you draft something for your readers that will explain the situation.

Lastly, I have been discussing the possibility of a class-action lawsuit against the company (with an attorney who approached me, and handles this sort of thing). If you are possibly interested in participating in that, please subscribe to my newsletter (so you get any updates about that) and also send me an e-mail noting your interest in participating. TamaraRubin@mac.com.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions. 

Thank you for reading and sharing my posts.

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama

Click on the image below of the first page of the letter in order to see the full three-page letter that Xtrema/ Ceramcor sent out to its resellers last week (Friday 5/24) in an attempt to discredit my findings: