Monday, October 12, 2020
Writing to you from a cabin in Maine (on a lake in the forest!)
I am SO EXCITED that these Flintstones glass mugs (from McDonald’s) are definitely Lead-free! Before I had my first child, my boyfriend at the time had collected a full set of these for me. I don’t have them any more, but I think I might try to collect them again.
I had heard these may have been made for McDonald’s by Princess House. If you have any information that might confirm that, please share it with me. Because these are relatively modern pressed glass with no painted decorative elements, it’s actually not surprising that they are Lead-free. This is exactly the sort of thing that I would guess would be Lead-free (even in the absence of XRF testing to confirm it.)
Introduction (for those new to this website):
Tamara Rubin is an independent advocate for consumer goods safety. 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. Tamara uses XRF testing (a scientific method used by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) to test consumer goods for the presence of toxicants (toxic heavy metals), including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Antimony and Arsenic.
XRF reading for the Flintstones Pre-Dawn glass McDonald’s mug pictured here:
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): non-detect
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Barium (Ba): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): non-detect
- Antimony (Sb): non-detect
- Selenium (Se): non-detect
- Vanadium (V): 216 +/- 72 ppm
XRF reading for the mug pictured here:
60-second reading. Reading #2
- Lead (Pb): non-detect
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Barium (Ba): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): non-detect
- Antimony (Sb): non-detect
- Selenium (Se): non-detect
- Vanadium (V): 208 +/- 63 ppm
- Titanium (Ti): 165 +/- 71 ppm
To see more products like this that I have tested, here are some links:
- More McDonald’s Collectable Glass Mugs
- More McDonald’s Collectable Glassware
- More Lead-free Mugs
- My overview post about choosing a Lead-free mug.
- Some additional Lead-free mug choices.
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.
Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
I have the full set if your interested
Hi! Thank you for finding out that the Flintstones mugs are safe. Do you know or have you tested if the McDonald’s Batman mugs (they’re similar to these) are safe to use? Those are from the 1995 Batman Forever release. And also, do you know if the grey glass mugs from the 70s (they have embossed elements of the McDonald’s characters on them) are safe to use? Thanks for all of your findings! I’m an avid collector of McDonald’s merch and used to use an older glass a lot oops. My glass/mug collection will happily remain in a display case from here on out lol (especially my Garfield mugs).
Saw a couple of these at a thrift store and was worried if they were unsafe. A quick google search led me here. Now I have a couple of Flintstones mugs. Thank you very much for this service!