Vintage child’s school desk painted with Lead paint (because of course it is!): 5,652 ppm Lead

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For those new to this website:

Tamara Rubin is a federal-award-winning independent advocate for consumer goods safety and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children, her sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005. Since 2009 Tamara has been using XRF testing (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.

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XRF test results for the brown painted areas of the desk pictured:

• Lead (Pb): 5,652 +/- 288 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
• Mercury (Hg): non-detect
• Barium (Ba): non-detect
• Chromium (Cr): 15,000 +/- 700 ppm
• Antimony (Sb): non-detect
• Selenium (Se): non-detect
• Tin (Sn): 148 +/- 72 ppm

Lead Safe Mama’s advice: don’t have vintage furniture in a child’s play space.

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Thank you for reading and sharing our 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 the fact that I have 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, as well as take the time to document each item with photographs.

To this end, in the articles this weekend, 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).

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THAT SAID, if you are new here, below are EIGHT LINKS with some important background information:

1. This link discusses the testing we report on the website.
2. This link has a short video that shows you how to efficiently search the more than 3,000 articles and pages here on LeadSafeMama.com.
3. This link has info about my background as well as rates to hire me for an event, a private home consultation, or as a consultant.
4. This link has information about my October United States travel schedule and my current calendar for scheduling in-person home consultations with me this year.
5. This link has information about hiring me for a zoom consult or to teach a class or be a speaker at a zoom event.
6. This is the link to the documentary feature film I directed and produced on childhood Lead poisoning. I encourage you to watch it if you have not yet seen it. It is 92 minutes, so grab some popcorn… it is up on YouTube free of charge.
7. This is the link to our new “Shop Lead Safe Mama” website — which lists only products (in various categories) that we have found to be consistently Lead-free (when tested with an XRF instrument).
8. This is the link explaining how to have something of yours tested with the test results reported here on the site.

I think that’s it! Let me know if you have any questions about this particular item by commenting here on this article. Thanks again for being here!

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama