Vintage Floral Meito Hand-Painted China — Made in Japan — Tested Positive for Lead, Antimony, Arsenic, Cobalt, & Cadmium!
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). 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).
Short (3-minute) video discussing this dish:
September 6, 2021 — Monday
XRF test results for vintage floral Meito dish (made in Japan)
Reading #1) White center food surface of dish
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): 35 +/- 4 ppm
- Cadmium (Cd): 12 +/- 2 ppm
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): non-detect
- Iron (Fe): 1,411 +/- 62 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 59 +/- 11 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 36 +/- 6 ppm
- Indium (In): 11 +/- 3 ppm
- Tin (Sn): 16 +/- 3 ppm
- Antimony (Sb): 18 +/- 5ppm
- Bismuth (Bi): 31 +/- 4 ppm
Reading #2) Floral edge food surface of dish
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): 8,698 +/- 85 ppm
- Cadmium (Cd): 6 +/- 2 ppm
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): 1,633 +/- 134 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 2,361 +/- 74 ppm
- Cobalt (Co): 257 +/- 29 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 1,318 +/- 27 ppm
- Indium (In): 10 +/- 3 ppm
- Tin (Sn): 118 +/- 4 ppm
- Antimony (Sb): 61 +/- 6ppm
- Platinum (Pt): 173 +/- 25 ppm
Reading #3) Back mark on dish
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): 8,143 +/- 73 ppm
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): 1,539 +/- 58 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 1,397 +/- 35 ppm
- Nickel (Ni): 55 +/- 10 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 1,073 +/- 17 ppm
- Arsenic (As): 1,005 +/- 34 ppm
- Antimony (Sb): 221 +/- 18 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 1,117 +/- 80 ppm
- Bismuth (Bi): 36 +/- 19 ppm
Some additional reading that might be of interest:
- The article discussing what testing methodology we use for the results we publish on this website.
- A piece discussing how to send in an item for us to test
- Here are some things you can test at home.
- Here are some that might be better tested with an XRF instrument.
- This is why home test kits don’t really work on most dishes.
Thanks for reading. Thank you for sharing this work. As always, 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 (which may not be right away, but I will try)!
Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
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I have a set that reads
“James Japanese China”
“Meito China made in Japan”
“Rosalie”
“Hand painted”
Have you tested?
I have a set of dishes from my mother, they are Meito China, made in Japan, hand painted. Gold rimmed. well, maybe not as it is faded. I use a small tea cup saucer to feed my cat wet food out of. She has now started to present with some sort of illness. We have done blood work 2x and vet can’t figure out what is causing her symptoms. My daughter got a “holy spirit” nudge, and she said something about lead poisoning from dish. Is there anyway to confirm that these particular dishes have lead? I can send pictures if you need.