For those new to the Lead Safe Mama 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 four sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005).
- Tamara owns and runs Lead Safe Mama, LLC — a unique community collaborative woman-owned small business for childhood Lead poisoning prevention and consumer goods safety.
- Since July of 2022, the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has been responsible for five product recalls (FDA and CPSC).
- All test results reported on this website are science-based, accurate, and replicable.
- Please check out our press page to see some of the amazing coverage of our work so far this year!
Published: January 7, 2022
Scroll down to see the full XRF test results for the Paparazzi Accessories item pictured here, (a cuff bracelet with a gray leather band and silver sequins).
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is NOT testing that can be completed with a home test kit. The home test kits that many people are using to test this Paparazzi jewelry piece are neither accurate, nor reliable. They ARE NOT designed to test consumer goods for Lead (or other heavy metals) and they are a cheap knock-off of the genuine 3M LeadCheck® kits, which are also, incidentally, only designed to test for Lead in paint. These knock-off home Lead test kits (that people are buying on Amazon, see at this link) give FALSE POSITIVES on non-Leaded metallic substrates, including Zinc. Please do not use any home test kits to test jewelry for Lead — you will be wasting your money!
There are only two way to test these Paparazzi pieces for Lead or other toxicants (heavy metals):
- With XRF testing, which is what Lead Safe Mama, LLC uses here, and is the testing methodology used by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission to screen for heavy metals
- Or by sending it to an accredited lab for testing (using digestive analysis, or other sophisticated methodology).
The reason Lead Safe Mama, LLC conducts this testing (using XRF technology) and reports the test results here on LeadSafeMama.com (and the reason this information is NOT behind a paywall) is because this information is otherwise not attainable by the consumer. Our goal is to give consumers access to free, science-based (replicable and accurate) information they might not otherwise have access to given the very high cost for the instrumentation required to complete this testing being out of most consumer’s reach. (The annoying pop-up ads on this website help cover the cost of the work we do here… I apologize in advance if they are distracting!)
Some additional reading on this website relevant to this article:
- Testing a Paparazzi ring
- Testing Paparazzi earrings
- The response to Paparazzi’s corporate statement in December 2021
- An overview article about the testing Lead Safe Mama uses for the results reported on this website
- A piece about Lead testing using reactive agent home test kits
- A category with all Paparazzi-related articles on this website
Reading #1) Silver Sequins
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): non-detect
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): 7 +/- 1 ppm
- Chromium (Cr): 63 +/- 23 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 17 +/- 9 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 42 +/- 5 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 5 +/- 2 ppm
- Antimony (Sb): 51 +/- 10 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 204 +/- 48 ppm
- No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.
Reading #2) Gray Leather (?) Backing
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): non-detect
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): 5 +/- 1 ppm
- Chromium (Cr): 200 +/- 22 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 21 +/- 8 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 7 +/- 4 ppm
- Antimony (Sb): 33 +/- 8 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 187 +/- 41 ppm
- No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.
Reading #3) Outer Surface of Snap
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): non-detect
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): 193 +/- 56 ppm
- Manganese (Mn): 1,592 +/- 95 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 503,200 +/- 700 ppm
- Cobalt (Co): 1,961 +/- 253 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 484,800 +/- 700 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 5,726 +/- 138 ppm
- Tin (Sn): 1,648 +/- 32 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 331 +/- 48 ppm
- Platinum (Pt): 254 +/- 94 ppm
- Gold (Au): 143 +/- 76 ppm
- No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.
Reading #4) Inner Surface of Snap, 3D (not flat) part
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): non-detect
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): 167 +/- 65 ppm
- Manganese (Mn): 987 +/- 81 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 263,800 +/- 600 ppm
- Cobalt (Co): 2,706 +/- 192 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 724,000 +/- 700 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 5,978 +/- 145 ppm
- Selenium (Se): 226 +/- 45 ppm
- Tin (Sn): 1,532 +/- 36 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 338 +/- 58 ppm
- No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.
Reading #5) Sparkly Crystals on Band
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): non-detect
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): 201 +/- 30 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 46 +/- 12 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 1,175 +/- 15 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 561 +/- 9 ppm
- Antimony (Sb): 127 +/- 8 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 12,900 +/- 100 ppm
- No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.
Reading #6) Tiny Metal Bumps on Band
60-second reading
- Lead (Pb): non-detect
- Cadmium (Cd): non-detect
- Mercury (Hg): non-detect
- Bromine (Br): non-detect
- Chromium (Cr): 103 +/- 24 ppm
- Iron (Fe): 186 +/- 12 ppm
- Copper (Cu): 56 +/- 5 ppm
- Zinc (Zn): 16 +/- 3 ppm
- Barium (Ba): 152 +/- 49 ppm
- No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.
For some context:
- Lead is toxic to children in the paint, glaze, or coatings at 90 ppm and up. It is considered illegal for items intended for children at 90 ppm and up in an item’s surface coating, and 100 ppm and up in the item’s substrate.
- Cadmium is considered unsafe for children at levels as low as 40 ppm and up. Cadmium is considered toxic (and illegal) in jewelry intended for use by children at levels of 300 ppm and up.
- Antimony is not currently subject to any federal regulatory limit/ does not have total content restrictions (in consumer goods) based on toxicity concerns — it is, however, known to cause cancer in rats at low levels of exposure.
- Total content for Mercury and Arsenic in items intended for use by children is also not currently regulated or limited (specifically, total content, as detectable by XRF analysis).
- Lastly, none of these limits or considerations apply to items intended for use by adults, even though these metals are known to be toxic.
Continue reading below the image, or click the table image to read more about the study that created it. 
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