Polar Express official souvenir bell from Whippany, NJ: Lead-free, Cadmium-free, Arsenic-free, Cadmium-free (Phew!)

For those new to this 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 sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005). Since 2009, Tamara has been using XRF technology (a scientific method used by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) to test consumer goods for toxicants (specifically heavy metals — including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Antimony, and Arsenic). Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February 2023 (March 2023 print edition).

When tested with an XRF instrument, this Polar Express souvenir bell (from the Whippany, NJ Polar Express Train) had the following readings:

Test on the bell
(multiple tests on all components of bell were conducted with similar results)

• Chromium (Cr): 10,400 +/- 400 ppm
• Gold (Au): 9,310 +/- 2,102 ppm
• Copper (Cu): 786,100 +/- 4,500 ppm
• Nickel (Ni): 152,900 +/- 2,300 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 39,200 +/- 1,200 ppm

Leather string (may be faux-leather)

• Zinc (Zn): 22 +/- 12 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 94 +/- 33 ppm
• Titanium (Ti): 1,752 +/- 68 ppm
• Chlorine (Cl): 1,139 +/- 289 ppm

Some additional reading (& test results) you might be interested in:

• Link to more Christmas items I have tested.
• Link to more Polar Express items I have tested.
• Link to more bells I have tested.
• A post discussing the testing methodologies used for the test results we report on this website.

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

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama