How much Lead can you buy for $6.99 at Hobby Lobby? Ceramic red rose cabinet knob / drawer pull: 1,387 ppm Lead, 11 ppm Cadmium.

Introduction to Tamara Rubin
(for those new to this website!)

Tamara Rubin lives in Portland, Oregon and is a child health advocate, author, documentary filmmaker, and mother of four sons. Her young men are now 24, 18, 15, and 12. She has won multiple national awards for her Lead-poisoning prevention advocacy work (including two from U.S. government agencies). In 2020 she had more than 1.165 million unique individual readers visit her #LeadSafeMama blog – from more than 200 countries (per Google Analytics) around the world!

It is with the help, support, and participation of these readers that she conducts and reports on independent testing of consumer goods for toxicants (Lead, Mercury, Arsenic, Cadmium, and Antimony), using high-accuracy X-Ray Fluoresence analysis (read more about that here). She goes by #LeadSafeMama on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram and has over 2,700 separate posts of information (mostly consumer goods test results) on her blog here at LeadSafeMama.com.

Tamara’s advocacy work has been mentioned in print in The New York Times; the New York Post; Mother Jones; Parents Magazine; Vice.com; MNN.com; TruthOut; WebMD; the Huffington Post,;USA Today; Grok Nation, and more (too many outlets to list!) – and in other media (T.V. and radio), on the Today Show; Kids in the House; Al Jazeera English; The Voice of Russia; CBS This Morning, and through news stories on CBS; ABC; NBC, and even Fox News – as well as in countless podcasts and other interviews.

Continue reading below the images.

When tested with an XRF instrument the Red Rose (ceramic) drawer pull / cabinet knob pictured here (purchased at Hobby Lobby) had the following readings:

#1) Ceramic Red Rose (main component)

Lead (Pb): 38 +/- 9 ppm
Cadmium (Cd): 11 +/- 4 ppm
Chromium (Cr): 1,096 +/- 152 ppm
Bismuth (Bi): 31 +/- 9 ppm
Platinum (Pt): 78 +/- 31 ppm
Zinc (Zn): 34 +/- 13 ppm
Iron (Fe): 2,608 +/- 186 ppm
Vanadium (V): 193 +/- 81 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 1,804 +/- 202 ppm

#2) Brass base of rose

Lead (Pb): 1,387 +/- 181 ppm
Selenium (Se): 876 +/- 165 ppm
Zinc (Zn): 39,700 +/- 900 ppm
Copper (Cu): 2,065 +/- 936 ppm
Iron (Fe): 676,800 +/- 2,000 ppm
Manganese (Mn): 6,109 +/- 493 ppm

#3) Metal washer

Nb: 1,712 +/- 133 ppm
Zinc (Zn): 58,000 +/- 4,800 ppm
Iron (Fe): 602,800 +/- 28,000 ppm
Manganese (Mn): 950 +/- 356 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 1,853 +/- 605 ppm

#4) Metal nut

Zinc (Zn): 160,300 +/- 1,800 ppm
Iron (Fe): 833,500 +/- 2,000 ppm
Manganese (Mn): 4,295 +/- 477 ppm

#5) Screw attached to base

Nb: 1,587 +/- 81 ppm
Palladium (Pd): 19 +/- 7 ppm
Zinc (Zn): 37,600 +/- 1,800 ppm
Copper (Cu): 234 +/- 93 ppm
Iron (Fe): 247,000 +/- 7,900 ppm
Manganese (Mn): 1,670 +/- 321 ppm
Indium (In): 55 +/- 17 ppm
Titanium (Ti): 2,667 +/- 421 ppm

“Tamara, tell me more about this testing…”

Testing is done with the same instrumentation used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to test consumer goods for Lead (and other toxicants), when screening for safety (including screening items intended for use by children to make sure they fall within acceptable levels.) All tests are done for a minimum of 60 seconds unless otherwise noted. Tests are repeated multiple times on each component to confirm the results. Test results are science-based, accurate and replicable.

Some additional reading that may be of interest:

To read more about the testing methodology for nearly all test results reported on this blog, click here. Thank you for reading and for sharing my posts. As always, please let me know if you have any questions. With 1.165 Million unique readers in 2020 alone I am not always able to answer each and every question personally, but I do try. Thank you.

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama

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Introduction to Tamara Rubin (for those new to this website!)