Vintage Cherry Pattern Scoop (possibly Franciscan): 237,000 ppm Lead (90 ppm Lead & up is considered unsafe)

For those new to this website:

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). Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February of 2023 (March 2023 print edition).

When tested with an XRF instrument the item pictured here had the following readings:

#1) on the ceramic of the scoop

Lead (Pb): 237,200 +/- 14,000 ppm
Barium (Ba): 738 +/- 224 ppm
Selenium (Se): 255 +/- 124 ppm
Zirconium (Zr): 2,400 +/- 212 ppm

#2) on the wood handle of the scoop

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

Thank you for reading and sharing my articles! — This piece was published the weekend of June 4-6, 2021

With the articles I am writing this weekend, I am doing my best to write up and publish as many test result sets as possible as quickly as possible (because I am over a YEAR behind in my writing as a result of having had absolutely no childcare for most of the pandemic — no childcare since about two weeks before the pandemic actually, as my kids were already out sick with various illnesses when the pandemic started)!

Yup that’s right — some people have been waiting (ever so patiently) for more than a year for the test results for their items because of the impact the pandemic has had on my ability to both test consumer goods and coherently write about them (and also take the time to document each item with photographs).

To this end, in this weekend’s articles, I am simply including photos of the items tested along with the XRF test results and will not be writing more specifically about each of these products — like I usually do — at this time in the interest of getting as much information out to my readers as quickly as possible.