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).
Sunday — November 21, 2021
I have no idea what year these are from but the pricetag is “88 cents,” so that is somewhat of an indicator! I don’t know if that price was for the full box or for one of the ornaments (it says “each”) — but for context, a glass ball ornament today (of a similar size) costs about $8 or $10 (based on what I have seen from the shopping I have been doing this year)!
Most important: The first image below is all of the pink particulates coming off on the purple sheet I was working on (just from the ornament sitting on the sheet for a moment). This level of deterioration is quite concerning even though the Lead and Arsenic levels are relatively low (from a consumer goods standpoint).
XRF test results for the ornament pictured
- Lead (Pb): 23 +/- 6 ppm
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): 370 +/- 76 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 1,341 +/- 62 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 36 +/- 20 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 68 +/- 10 ppm
- Arsenic (As): 9 +/- 5 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 7,937 +/- 150 ppm
- Bismuth (Bi): 22 +/- 6 ppm
- No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.
Takeaway:
I think avoiding vintage glass ornaments is generally prudent — both given the toxicant profile and the potential level of wear on these items (depending on the age).
Thank you for reading and for sharing these results. 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 Elise Rubin
#LeadSafeMama
hi Tamara,
I am 79 years old and remember ornaments like these for sale at every five and dime store in the 1950’s. The colored part flaked off quite easily and the price was for the whole box for mass manufactured cheaply made ornaments like these.
They broke easily also.
Thanks for all your posts for revealing so much information about toxic materials in so many manufactured products. I have purchased safe glassware and the same corelle ware you purchased and cleaned out most of our leaded corelle and corning ware. I learned many years ago to eliminate items that seemed to cause allergic distress but the lead causing chemical sensitivity was never mentioned as a possibility for environmental illness.
I am grateful for your concern for others and sharing your continuing research. Thank you once again.
Thank you so much for commenting. Comments like yours make me cry! (Literally – I’m sitting here bawling.) I’m so thankful for this “community” on the internet – random strangers banding together to help share information to protect others! (Happy tears!) You are the same age as my mom would have been too!
T