Organifi glass water bottle logo is painted with LEAD PAINT! 15,600 ppm Lead (90 ppm & up is unsafe.)

Not surprisingly, this bottle is advertised as a healthier choice!
Below are images and text from their website on September 6, 2020 – Sunday

From the Organifi website: “Sleek, Classy and Stylish. A new way to show your dedication to health and wellness to the entire world.”

Continue reading below the images.

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Image #1 from the Organifi website today:

Image #2 from the Organifi website today:

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When tested with a high-precision XRF Instrument, the paint on this glass bottle was positive for an unsafe level of Lead.

Today – in the year 2020 (more than two decades in to a new century) – it is still not uncommon for modern glass products (baby bottles, water bottles, measuring cups, mixing bowls, etc.) to be painted with high Lead-content paint in the decorative markings or measurement markings on the exterior. For some reason, this is an area of manufacturing that has been completely overlooked by our regulatory agencies. In fact, even today – well in to the second half of 2020 – it is actually quite common to find modern (newly-manufactured) glass kitchenware products (or other products intended for use with food and beverages) painted with Lead paint in the exterior markings! It is even more common when looking at the narrower focus area of glass reusable water bottles, like this one – and is therefore a good reason to avoid glass reusable water bottles with ANY painted markings – no matter how small or seemingly insignificant the painted markings may be.

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An alternative:

The brand LifeFactory makes reusable glass water bottles without any painted markings; they instead generally have their logo integrated in to a protective silicone sleeve that helps the bottle resist breakage — although with sufficiently rough treatment they ARE glass, and can still break! [LifeFactory is the brand I have chosen for my family, and we have several that we been using every single day for the past year or so.] Here are some links to some options there (I have used these since my children were babies):

• Baby Bottles (small)
• Baby Bottles (large)
• Adult Water Bottles – 16 oz
• Large Adult Water Bottles – 22 oz

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Continue reading below the image.

What were the exact XRF test results for the Organifi reusable glass water bottle pictured?

• Lead (Pb): 15,600 +/- 400 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 362 +/- 16 ppm
• Mercury (Hg): Non-Detect
• Barium (Ba): Non-Detect
• Chromium (Cr): Non-Detect
• Antimony (Sb): Non-Detect
• Selenium (Se): Non-Detect
• Palladium (PD): 7 +/- 3 ppm

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How much Lead is “too much” Lead?
…including some “Fun Facts”:

• 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.
• Substrates that test positive for 100 ppm Lead (or higher) are considered unsafe for children.
• There is currently no regulatory standard setting limits for Lead in paint on modern consumer goods intended for use by adults.
• When Lead-based paint was banned in 1978, the requirement was that paint for residential use (paint for houses, applied in areas that could be reached by children) must henceforth contain less than 600 ppm Lead.
• The allowable level of Lead in house paint was subsequently lowered, and today modern house paint must also be below 90 ppm Lead [and is now usually tests completely negative for Lead].

So if this glass water bottle were made today and considered to be “an item intended for use by children” it might be considered to be illegal (in violation of current regulatory standards set by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.) If it were ostensibly considered to be “an item intended for use by adults” (which it probably is) it would not be deemed illegal. That said, it is a well-known fact by now – but still bears repeating – that it literally just takes a microscopic amount of Lead to poison a human being!

To reiterate: While there is no regulatory standard limiting Lead content in consumer goods intended for use by adults, ALL U.S. regulatory agencies agree that “there is no safe level of Lead exposure“. Any amount of Lead exposure is considered harmful to humans, and should be avoided.

As adults today (in the modern world), we should work towards eliminating all known and all potential sources of exposure to Lead – because it is the aggregate exposure from all potential sources that is likely to cause long-term harm (it is not necessarily that one particular product might be a specific source of Lead-poisoning for you or for your family — although this has been known to happen with some food-use products [or non-food-use products if ingested]).

In my opinion, any potential exposure is not worth the risk of impacts, especially with an item intended for food-use, that we hold in our hands. In most cases, the Lead paint on a water bottle like this WILL also test positive with a reactive agent home test swab (link), which implies that it is also possible for the Lead in the logo to wear off into your sweaty workout hands when you hold the bottle (or otherwise into your home and kitchen environment – you can read more about that here.)

“How did the company allow this to happen?”

First off, I want to clearly call out the “greenwashing” of this product. The labeling of “Organifi” is meant to encourage you to think this is a “natural”, and somehow “organic”, or “better-for-you” product. It is my understanding the company sells powdered beverage and food supplements with this marketing approach as well. The problem is that most companies making an overtly– / blatantly– / obviously–branded product like this [vs. a company like LifeFactory – where the “product” is simply a humble glass bottle (with a nice protective silicone sleeve) — and the bottle itself does not normally have any branding markings] may put time and energy into choosing the materials for their product (the bottle and cap) but ALMOST NEVER put time in energy into making sure their brand marking / labeling is as non-toxic as the overall product is purported to be. The type of paint used in these branding / logo markings is often never given a thought – for almost every company I have come across – and in as much as they are not giving it much thought, they just go with what the manufacturer or supplier suggests (not thinking to ask for the formulation specifics) and that is how these branded “natural” / “better-for-you” glass water bottles (or pots and pans or baby bottles or other products) purporting to be the pinnacle of “healthy” [here is another one – link ] end up painted with high-Lead-content logo markings. [Here’s an example in a baby bottle, too.]

Please note: The painted markings on these products CAN and DO wear off. If you want to read more about why that is a concern, click here.

“What should we do about this?”

The way things work here at LeadSafeMama.com is my readers help direct this work. My readers have me test things using high-precision XRF analysis (you can read more about that here). I report on the test results here on my blog. Then my readers often help with the next steps – and that is what I am asking you to do today. Here are the next steps: 

• If you own one of these bottles, stop using it.
• Set it aside until the company offers some kind of resolution (like free replacement – or a public recall, with a refund of your purchase price). If you do set it aside, please put it in a sealed plastic bag.
• If you like, for your own curiosity, you could buy some LeadCheck® swabs to test it to confirm it is Leaded, but that is frankly a waste of money at this point (given the level of accuracy, precision, and repeatability of testing using a high-precision XRF instrument)… but I put it out there for those who are so inclined. Here’s a link for LeadCheck® swabs.
• Call the manufacturer!!!: Tell them you have been let down. Explain to them that you expected their products to be healthy and natural and safe. Tell them there is no acceptable amount of Lead in a water bottle (whether in the painting markings or anywhere else), and ask them to correct the problem. Tell them there are countless companies out there using Lead-free paint in their branding and product markings and they should look to those companies for safer solutions. (Here’s another example of a glass water bottle I purchased which had Lead-free painted markings.) Ask for a refund, ask for accountability, ask them to reformulate their products to be Lead-free.
• AGAIN: It is NOT illegal for these bottles to be painted with Lead paint – it is only unethical -and in my opinion, a misrepresentation — especially given the strident branding of these products (“A new way to show your dedication to health and wellness to the entire world.”) The “loophole” is that these water bottles are “made for use by adults”, and therefore there is no regulatory limit on how much Lead the company can use in the paint. HOWEVER, here is a link to a study discussing the potential for harm caused by Lead-painted glassware.

As always, thank you for reading and for sharing my posts. Please let me know if you have any questions, and I will do my best to answer them personally as soon as I have a moment. [Which may not be immediately right now, since I am currently driving cross country to drop my kiddo off at college!]

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama

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