Posted: Saturday, March 14, 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 contaminants including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury and Arsenic. [bio link]
My gold tooth:
I have had this old gold crown of mine sitting around for years (for no good reason) so I thought it was finally time to post the test results for this hunk of metal that lived in my mouth for the large part of a decade! I had it removed (and replaced with a “new-bigger-better” one) sometime in early 2016. I was actually reluctant to test this gold tooth given the personal implications and the fact that I have found both Mercury and Arsenic in gold jewelry items previously.
Some additional reading that may be of interest:
- Click here to see some other gold items I have tested.
- Click here to read more about my testing methodology.
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 my gold tooth crown pictured on this post:
Testing from the top side / polished side – 180 seconds (three minutes):
- Silver (Ag): 120,700 +/- 24,000 ppm
- Nb: 2,154+/- 348 ppm
- Palladium (Pd): 34,600 +/- 6,800 ppm
- Gold (Au): 702,600 +/- 124,000 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 7,961 +/- 1,350 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 94,100 +/- 15,000 ppm
- Indium (In): 5,090 +/- 1,040
Testing from the under side – 180 seconds:
- Silver (Ag): 130,600 +/- 1,000 ppm
- Nb: 1,505 +/- 164 ppm
- Palladium (Pd): 38,900 +/- 500 ppm
- Gold (Au): 720,200 +/- 2,200 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 6,709 +/- 424 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 88,500 +/- 1,000 ppm
- Indium (In): 5,215 +/- 293 ppm
- Vanadium (V): 368 +/- 159 ppm
~ End of Post ~
Scroll down for additional photos of this item.
Meg says
Phew!