Posted: Saturday, March 28, 2020
Introduction: Tamara Rubin is an independent advocate for consumer goods safety, and she is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children. She began testing consumer goods for toxicants in 2009 and was the parent-advocate responsible for finding Lead in the popular fidget spinner toys in 2017. She uses high-precision XRF testing (a scientific method used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission) to test consumer goods for metallic contaminants – including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury and Arsenic. [bio link]
Strawberry Shortcake Lunch box:
This is probably exciting news for Strawberry Shortcake fans and collectors out there: for all components tested (see details below) this vintage (1985) Strawberry Shortcake Strawberryland lunchbox (by Aladdin) was *unexpectedly* negative for Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Arsenic and Antimony! This is a RARE find and is especially unusual for vintage lunchboxes, for vintage items from 1985 and for vintage Strawberry Shortcake collectibles! I did not get the thermos with it and so have not tested it – although I imagine that (based on my testing of vintage thermoses to date) it is likely to be positive for Lead (although could prove to be an anomaly like this lunchbox!)
The full XRF test results of the strawberry shortcake lunch box pictured are below (so please scroll down). Here are links to some additional reading that may be of interest, based on your interest in the test results of this item:
- Click here to see more lunchboxes I have tested.
- Click here to see more vintage items I have tested.
- Click here to see more Strawberry Shortcake items I have tested.
- Click here to learn about how I test items.
Stay Safe Out There!
A quick note from Tamara
Hey readers – I hope you are staying well out there with all that is going on in the world right now. I’m hanging out at home with my children – and have been doing so for 26 days now. I pulled them out of school over a week before things got wild – just to be safe. Each of my three youngest sons have compromised immune systems (which manifests in different ways for each of them), due to having been Lead-poisoned as babies.
In between kid-wrangling I am working hard to publish literally HUNDREDS of new posts (with test results for various consumer goods I have tested over the past couple of years, but have not yet had a moment to report on!). These posts have created a backlog in my system for more than a year now – and it’s actually nice to have a *break* with some time to catch up! To make this happen as quickly as possible, I am (as with this post) simply posting the images and the test results – without a lot of additional information. [Do not worry — I will continue to update them with more information as I get caught up and begin to have the time!]
For those new to my website, please check out the menu in the header of the website for more information about how I test things (and my background, etc.) On each post you can also click on any of the keyword tabs at the top of the post to find more items in that category. Here’s the post discussing the type of testing I do, and the specific instrument I use to detect, analyze and confirm metals content, and ultimately produce the resultant data for each item reported here – link.
Please Note: Test results reported below are science-based, accurate, and replicable. Test results reported here are from tests that were done for a minimum of 60 seconds each, and repeated multiple times (on each component of the item shown), to confirm the results. As with all the testing reported here on my blog, a freshly-calibrated high-precision XRF instrument testing in Consumer Goods mode was used to test the item pictured here.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions.
Thank you for reading and for sharing my posts!
Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
Amazon links are affiliate links. If you purchase something after clicking on one of these links I may receive a small percentage of what you spend at no extra cost to you.
Test results for the Strawberry Shortcake Lunch box pictured on this post:
On red strawberry:
- Iron (Fe): 739,700 +/- 5,500 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 151,500 +/- 2,000 ppm
- Chlorine (Cl): 108,400 +/- 5,700 ppm
On green leaf hat:
- Iron (Fe): 880,500 +/- 2,600 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 111,800 +/- 1,600 ppm
- Molybdenum (Mo): 200 +/- 131 ppm
- Cobalt (Co): 4,404 +/- 2,043 ppm
- Manganese (Mn): 2,381 +/- 819 ppm
On yellow banana hat:
- Iron (Fe): 744,300 +/- 4,700 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 146,200 +/- 1,800 ppm
- Chlorine (Cl): 108,600 +/- 4,800 ppm
On red plastic handle:
- Zinc (Zn): 163 +/- 23 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 841 +/- 85 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 556 +/- 194 ppm
On bare metal connectors of handle:
- Zinc (Zn): 824 +/- 278 ppm
- Nickel (Ni): 550,200 +/- 3,500 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 440,500 +/- 2,900 ppm
- Cobalt (Co): 6,611 +/- 1,545 ppm
- Manganese (Mn): 1.489 +/- 503 ppm
On white interior:
- Iron (Fe): 816,800 +/- 75,000 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 48,600 +/- 4,800 ppm
~ End of Post ~
Scroll down for additional photos of this item.
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