Posted: Sunday, March 22, 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.
Red Dollar Tree Robot toy!
Please note, I tested THREE of these toys, each with a different color scheme. The green one is the only one that tested 100% Lead-free (in Consumer Goods mode). The full XRF test results of the toy robot pictured are below (so please scroll down). In the meantime here are some additional related posts here on the blog that may be of interest!
- Click here to see all three of the Dollar Tree Robot toys I tested.
- Click here to see more toys I have tested.
- Click here to see more Dollar Tree Store items that I have tested.
- Click here to read more about testing toys for Lead.
It’s the #ZombieApocalypse, 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 mostly at home with my children – and have been doing so for about 10 days now. I pulled them out of school over a week ago – 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, 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
Test results for the Dollar Tree Store, Greenbrier International Robot Toy pictured on this post:
Reading with a focus on the red part:
- Barium (Ba): 441 +/- 94 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 19 +/- 9 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 78 +/- 26 ppm
- Vanadium (V): 311 +/- 180 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 3,372 +/- 176 ppm
- Chlorine (Cl): 906 +/- 498 ppm
Reading with a focus on the blue part:
- Copper (Cu): 160 +/- 18 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 35 +/- 23 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 2,704 +/- 90 ppm
Reading with a focus on the black part:
- Lead (Pb): 48 +/- 13 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 944 +/- 190 ppm
- Bromine (Br): 23 +/- 6 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 564 +/- 41 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 60 +/- 30 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 1,361 +/- 113 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 4,075 +/- 222 ppm
- Chlorine (Cl): 5,794 +/- 1,396 ppm
~ End of Post ~
Scroll down for additional photos of this item.
Hello Tamara, when you say “safe by all standards” is that just for the standards of what’s allowed in children’s toys or is this also safe by your standards as in you wouldn’t have a problem with your kids playing with this? I’m asking because someone gifted my son this and, while I’m mostly against our kids playing with plastic toys, the lead seems concerning especially because our kids still put things in their mouths.
Thanks,
Jamie
Hi Jamie,
Safe by official standards. There is not yet a “Lead Safe Mama” official standard – but maybe some day! I would not let my children play with this, especially if they were still putting things in their mouths.
Tamara