Maybe avoid Shutterfly mugs for Father’s Day? c. 2016 Mug: 19,000 ppm Lead, 2,025 ppm Arsenic, 805 ppm Cadmium.

XRF test results for c. 2016 Shutterfly Mug

Summary: While the interior of these mugs appears to be Lead-free, the exterior has three known toxic heavy metals and your lips do touch the exterior (when the mug is used as intended.)

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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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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 more than three months now (since March 2nd.) Each of my three youngest sons (I have four sons total!) 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 (unless otherwise noted), 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

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On black  – 60 seconds – bottom of mug

• Lead (Pb): 9,394 +/- 361 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 403 +/- 41 ppm
• Arsenic (As): 1,276 +/- 173 ppm
• Barium (Ba): 1,645 +/- 304 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): 3,205 +/- 129 ppm
• Tin (Sn): 185 +/- 46 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 2828 +/- 139 ppm
• Nickel (Ni): 1,699 +/- 111 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 2039 +/- 196 ppm
• Titanium (Ti): 718 +/- 161 ppm
• Chlorine (Cl): 5,142 +/- 1,061 ppm

Shiny black – handle and exterior

• Lead (Pb): 19,000 +/- 900 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 805 +/- 71 ppm
• Arsenic (As): 2,025 +/- 298 ppm
• Barium (Ba): 2,258 +/- 408 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): 4,270 +/- 197 ppm
• Tin (Sn): 293 +/- 66 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 2,900 +/- 179 ppm
• Nickel (Ni): 2916 +/- 188 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 2897 +/- 287 ppm
• Titanium (Ti): 825 +/- 199 ppm
• Chlorine (Cl): 6583 +/- 1,246 ppm

Shiny black – interior food surface – 30 second reading

• Barium (Ba): 2,913 +/- 446 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): 3,454 +/- 226 ppm
• Copper (Cu): 159 +/- 84 ppm
• Nickel (Ni): 2,337 +/- 159 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 6,294 +/- 362 ppm

On photo (red shirt)- 60 seconds (see image below)

• Lead (Pb): 91 +/- 33 ppm
• Bismuth (Bi): 168 +/- 40 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 7110 +/- 417 ppm
• Copper (Cu): 331 +/- 91 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 1,461 +/- 358 ppm
• Titanium (Ti): 550 +/- 222 ppm
• Zirconium (Zr): 16,200 +/- 800 ppm