Who has one of these lurking in their kitchen drawer? Toss it! Vintage rolling pin with red handles: 7,941 ppm Lead (90 ppm is unsafe)

 

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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 2009, Tamara has been conducting XRF testing (a scientific testing method) using the exact instrumentation employed by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to test consumer goods for toxicants (specifically heavy metals — including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Antimony, and Arsenic).
• Since July of 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for 5 product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
• All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
• Items that Lead Safe Mama, LLC reports on are tested multiple times to confirm the results published (for each component tested).
• Recent notable press… There has been too much to mention already in 2024! Please check out our press page to see some of the amazing coverage of our work so far this year!

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Here’s another example of why using things from grandma’s kitchen might not be the best idea!

Vintage wooden items that have ANY paint on them should be regarded as suspect! This is especially true of vintage wooden items intended for food-use in the kitchen. As it turns out (not unexpected at all), this vintage/ antique wood rolling pin with red painted handles (pictured here in the post — just like the one your grandmother used to use, right?) is painted with LEAD PAINT!

Why is this a problem?

Think about how you use a rolling pin… you touch the handles to roll the dough… touch the handles again before you flip the dough… flip the dough… repeat. There is definite potential for Lead contaminating your food from an item like this (using it normally/ as intended). If you have one of these (from your grandma, from an antique shop, or otherwise), PLEASE consider discontinuing for food-use and PLEASE consider throwing it in the trash — so no one in the future ever uses it for food purposes, either! (For those who may be curious, the rolling pins I use when I cook in my home are the modern stone/ marble type with wooden handles — like the one at this link: https://amzn.to/31hHf1L, and a plain/ unfinished, one-piece solid hardwood one (similar to this design): https://www.thegrommet.com/products/vermont-rolling-pins-shaker-rolling-pin?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2ovijK2t6wIVOx-tBh3XKgwBEAQYAiABEgIKpfD_BwE#Material=Maple 

How much Lead is “too much” Lead?

Newly-manufactured items made today are considered unsafe for children to use if they are finished with any paint or coating that is 90 ppm Lead or higher. The federal government considers any Lead paint on a house to be extremely dangerous at 5,000 ppm Lead and higher (and if a hazard inspector gets a reading that high, the owner may be eligible for federal funds for intervention and clean-up). Accordingly — from any conceivable perspective — 7,941 ppm Lead on the painted handle of a food-use rolling pin is WAAAAY TOO MUCH Lead!

Here are the exact XRF readings for the handles of the item pictured:

• Lead (Pb): 7,941 +/- 264 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 23 +/- 7 ppm
• Mercury (Hg): Non-Detect
• Barium (Ba): 98 +/- 43 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): 4,719 +/- 743 ppm
• Antimony (Sb): Non-Detect
• Selenium (Se): Non-Detect
• Silver (Ag): 12 +/- 5 ppm

As always, thank you for reading and sharing this work. Please let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to answer them personally.

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama

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