Buckingham Palace Royal Birdsong English Fine Bone China: 11,900 ppm Lead. (We need to talk to the Queen about this!)

Published: June 13, 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.

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Below are the XRF Test results for the Buckingham Palace Royal Birdsong English Fine Bone China pictured in this post. It is my understanding that this is one of the china patterns sold by the Royal Family’s official line, but I don’t fully understand yet (based on the research I have done thus far) what role the Royal Family has in terms of manufacturing or design choices for these products. If you have more information about this, please let me know. Here’s a background link about the Royal Collection. If these products are in fact actually “approved” by the Royal Family, I think it is time to get them up to speed about the concern for Lead (& Arsenic) in dishware.

Test on blue decorated section of food surface:

• Lead (Pb): 11,900 +/- 700 ppm
• Arsenic (As): 1,598 +/- 309 ppm
• Barium (Ba): 10,500 +/- 800 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): 305 +/- 60 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 4,147 +/- 285 ppm
• Nickel (Ni): 184 +/- 80 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 680 +/- 209 ppm
• Chlorine (Cl): 6,134 +/- 1,377 ppm

Test on plain white section of food surface:

• Lead (Pb): 37 +/- 23 ppm
• Barium (Ba): 16,000 +/- 700 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 183 +/- 68 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 1,676 +/- 225 ppm
• Bismuth (Bi): 76 +/- 29 ppm

I will update the post with the XRF Test results for the gold portion of the dish shortly.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for reading and for sharing my posts.

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama