Vintage Royal Doulton Bunnykins baby bowl with raft design: 93,600 ppm Lead (90 ppm & up is unsafe for kids) + 3,460 ppm ARSENIC!
Published: October 10, 2020
Updated: September 2022
Published: October 10, 2020 To see more results for Bunnykins items Lead Safe Mama, LLC has tested, click here. Vintage Bunnykins ARE NOT SAFE FOR FOOD-USE and especially not safe for children to use! For context: Anything made today (2020) with over 90 ppm Lead in the paint, glaze, or coating is considered illegal in the United States if it is an item intended for use by children.
Reading #1) Center of the food surface on the dish (colorful design):
68-second reading
- Lead (Pb): 93,600 +/- 5,000 ppm
- Arsenic (As): 3,460 +/- 601 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 1,346 +/- 452 ppm
- Chromium (Cr): 1,478 +/- 179 ppm
- Antimony (Sb): 169 +/- 112 ppm
- Tin (Sn): 935 +/- 107 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 1,951 +/- 148 ppm
- Nickel (Ni): 220 +/- 66 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 2,856 +/- 290 ppm
- Chlorine (Cl): 14,700 +/- 3,400 ppm
Reading #2) Center of the food surface on the dish (area without design):
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): 23,300 +/- 700 ppm
- Arsenic (As): 1,965 +/- 175 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 1,602 +/- 261 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 627 +/- 85 ppm
- Chlorine (Cl): 4,265 +/- 2,004 ppm
Reading #3) Second reading (on a less worn surface of the bowl) in the center of the food surface on the dish (area without design):
30-second reading
- Lead (Pb): 39,400 +/- 2,200 ppm
- Arsenic (As): 2,447 +/- 437 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 1,554 +/- 511 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 641 +/- 167 ppm
- No Chlorine was detected in this reading.
See additional images of the item below.
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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). All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable. Items are tested multiple times to confirm the test results for each component tested. Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February of 2023 (March 2023 print edition).
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Thank you for this! We have had one bowl like this in circulation that our 9 year old daughter would use (maybe once a week). I’ll be taking it out of the cupboard immediately.
Oh! Good to hear.
Have you tested any of the Bunnykins dishes currently available, or any other modern Royal Daulton dishes? My table setting from my wedding gifts (2013-14) is the Gordon Ramsay Maze in light blue. I contacted RD and they claim it is “lead free.” They also say it is illegal to use lead… But your information seems to say that’s only the case for children’s dishes? Thank you for your help!
Yeah – on the case for children’s dishes. Here’s the Royal Doulton category on the website… I would say that older than 5 years old could go either way – and even some new stuff might be high lead depending on the colors and design. https://tamararubin.com/category/royal-doulton/
If I were to get emotional about the subject I would say the company is Evil (with a capital E). The fact that there is that song about them in the new Mary Poppins movie makes me sick. They made toxic dishes for babies for a century (? about? more than? I don’t know when they went into production off the top of my head) – and they made no effort to inform the public before shifting to lead free products for babies. They have made no public announcement, initiated no public recall, offered no refunds. It’s disgusting. They should issue a highly public prominent statement – offer refunds and issue a recall even on their decades old products that people may still have in their homes. I think they are close-to-criminal here. I am very upset about this personally as one of the Bunnykins dishes pictured on this website was owned by a friend who died of breast cancer at the beginning of the pandemic. She was not yet 40 years old. She left behind two young children. She used her Bunnykins dishes daily as a child and then was letting her children use the dishes from her childhood (from the 1980s) until I came to her house, tested them and told her to stop using them / to throw them out.
Did Bunnykins cause her breast cancer? I have no idea. Did her aggregate body burden of Lead from her childhood significantly impact the outcome of her breast cancer, leading to her early death? Yes – most likely. Did Bunnykins / Royal Doulton have to make high lead ceramic dishware for children? NO. Could they have used Lead-free glazes? YES. Did they know Lead was toxic at the beginning of the 20th century? YES – I am certain they did. Did they know Lead was toxic when they made my friend’s baby dishes in the 1980s? Yes – absolutely. There was a huge push in the late-1970s to get Lead outlawed in house paint. The toxic impacts of Lead were well known and at the top of the news cycle when these dishes were made (the dishes my friend used every day as a baby.) #KnowBetterDoBetter
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Tamara
Tamara