Costume Jewelry: decorative hair pin with red faux jewels – positive for high levels of Lead, Cadmium and Antimony (three known poisons!)

Introduction:

Tamara Rubin is a Federal award winning independent advocate for consumer goods safety and childhood Lead poisoning prevention. 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 metallic toxicants (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.

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These posts today are placeholders JUST with the XRF data for the item pictured. They will be updated with more details a.s.a.p. All readings are done multiple times to confirm the results for each component before sharing one full set of the readings for the item pictured.

Reading #1) on back side of hair pin (without gem)
60-second test

• Lead (Pb): 33,000 +/- 300 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 13,000 +/- 100 ppm
• Mercury (Hg): non-detect
• Bromine (Br): non-detect
• Chromium (Cr): non-detect
• Nickel (Ni): 2,925 +/- 100 ppm
• Copper (Cu): 588,900 +/- 700 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 177,000 +/- 500 ppm
• Nb: 880 +/- 32 ppm
• Tin (Sn): 175,500 +/- 400 ppm
• Antimony (Sb): 6,033 +/- 90 ppm
• Barium (Ba): 1,381 +/- 109 ppm
• Bismuth (Bi): 1,086 +/- 80 ppm
• no other metals detected

Reading #2) on front side of hair pin (with gem)
60-second test

• Lead (Pb): 10,300 +/- 300 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 9,006 +/- 372 ppm
• Mercury (Hg): non-detect
• Bromine (Br): non-detect
• Chromium (Cr): 1,102 +/- 141 ppm
• Vanadium (V): 2,602 +/- 261 ppm
• Manganese (Mn): 313 +/- 81 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 96 +/- 60 ppm
• Nickel (Ni): 1,067 +/- 69 ppm
• Copper (Cu): 191,100 +/- 5,100 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 119,500 +/- 3,300 ppm
• Nb: 343 +/- 26 ppm
• Indium (In): 118 +/- 20 ppm
• Tin (Sn): 56,200 +/- 2,200 ppm
• Antimony (Sb): 1,976 +/- 95 ppm
• Barium (Ba): 416 +/- 77 ppm
• Gold (Au): 2,522 +/- 240 ppm
• no other metals detected

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Some additional reading that may be of interest:

• A link discussing the testing methodology used here on this website.
• A menu with buttons to lots of different categories of information that can be found here on this website.
• A link to my documentary feature film on childhood Lead poisoning.
• The short video that shows you how to search this site.
• Things you can test at home with a LeadCheck swab
• Things you really cannot test at home (better tested with XRF technology)

As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for reading and thank you for sharing my posts.

Tamara Rubin
#LeadSafeMama