Introduction:
Tamara Rubin is an independent advocate for consumer goods safety and 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. She uses XRF testing (a scientific method used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission) to test consumer goods for contaminants including Lead, Cadmium, Mercury and Arsenic. To read more about the testing methodology employed for the test results reported on this blog, please click this link.
Published: June 4, 2021
Updated: July 16, 2021 – Friday
XRF test results from the painted decorative elements (& branding) on the glass milk bottle pictured:
- Lead (Pb): 38,500 +/- 1,400 ppm
- Cadmium (Cd): 751 +/- 57 ppm
- Chromium (Cr): 35,200 +/- 2,000 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 109 +/- 48 ppm
- Mercury (Hg): Non-detect
- Barium (Ba): Non-detect
- Antimony (Sb): Non-detect
- Selenium (Se): Non-detect
How much Lead is “too much” Lead?
For context, the amount of Lead that is considered unsafe in an item intended for use by children is anything 90 ppm Lead or higher in the paint, glaze or coating of an item or anything 100 ppm Lead or higher in the substrate. Modern dishes and glassware are not considered to be “items intended for use by children” and so fall outside of the concern for Lead in consumer goods (and the potential impact on children.)
Some additional reading that may be of interest:
- Why is this a problem if the Lead paint is “only on the outside”
- My milk-bottle overview post (with all the milk bottles I have tested and the results/links to those posts.)
- Why lead paint on milk bottles is a potential problem – specifically
- What can I test with a home test kit?
- Can I send you an item to test?
- How to use this website to search for products you have in your home (video).
As always, thank you for reading and for sharing these 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.
Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
After reading this I decided to test the milk I get from another Colorado dairy, Morning Fresh Dairy Farm (also Stan Pac glass) and the paint was positive for lead. I’m going to test my parents Longmont Dairy bottles too (I saw the email claiming the lead was removed but I want to be sure). I heard you were looking for someone to send you a bottle so you could re-test. Do you still need one?