Green glass Trader Giotto’s (Trader Joe’s) olive oil bottle: 117 +/- 37 ppm Lead — this is typical for green glass

  

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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 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!

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Green Glass Bottle — Trader Giotto’s Olive Oil (2019/2020)

When tested with a high-precision XRF instrument, the green glass bottle pictured here had the readings listed (for total metal content) below. Please note: The presence of Lead in the glass (at various levels) does not confirm nor refute the potential for leaching of Lead into the product. Leach testing must be completed separately (and is normally performed by product manufacturers to evaluate the safety of food packaging at the time of manufacture and distribution). To read more about the concern for potential leaching from modern green glass food packaging, please consider reading this post (link). 

Safe by all standards

While the levels of Lead found in this green glass olive oil bottle fall within the range of what is considered safe by all current applicable standards, my greater concern is what could potentially happen with long-term storage of food products in toxicant-positive packaging (glass or plastic). For example, if you kept a product like this on hand for years because you “stocked up” for the Zombie Apocalypse (or The Big Earthquake, etc). That said, we have significantly limited our use of olive oil (decades ago, when we learned about the potential possible carcinogenic links when subjected to high-temperatures [i.e. cooked]), and so do not have any major concerns with our occasional use of olive oil dispensed from a recently-purchased green glass bottle with trace (very low) levels of Lead. (Since olive oil of any quality cannot be purchased in a clear glass container [because the delicate oil is easily damaged by both heat and light] that potential solution is simply a “non-issue.”)

What could be done? The bigger picture

With all items like this (especially food packaging), I think our best course of action would be writing the companies manufacturing the food (and the packaging) and ask them to employ higher standards for their glass-sourcing. Lead-free light-protective glass exists; it CAN be made — there is no insurmountable technological barrier. These Lead levels are already low; why can’t they simply take it to the next level and insist on sourcing Lead-free packaging for their food products? We have seen over and over again that consumer demand can produce important shifts in products — and this would be a good time to put pressure on manufacturers. All federal agencies agree “there is no safe level of Lead exposure to humans,” so why should we tolerate the arbitrary and bogus setting of ostensibly “safe” levels of (any amount of) Lead in our food packaging?

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Reading #1 — 60 seconds, side of bottle

• Lead (Pb): 107 +/- 37 ppm
• Barium (Ba): 2,815 +/- 639 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): 417 +/- 55 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 3,531 +/- 340 ppm 

Reading #2 — 60 seconds, bottom corner of bottle

• Lead (Pb): 117 +/- 37 ppm
• Barium (Ba): 5,069 +/- 651 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): 452 +/- 53 ppm
• Tin (Sn): 131 +/- 75 ppm 
• Iron (Fe): 3,716 +/- 344 ppm 

Some additional reading:

• To see more green glass bottles we have tested, click here.
• To see more olive oil bottles Lead Safe Mama has tested, click here.
• To see more glass bottles (of all colors) we have tested, click here.
• To read more about the testing Lead Safe Mama conducts, click here.

Thank you for reading and for sharing these articles.

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

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama