Introduction (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. Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February of 2023.

July 28, 2022 — Thursday

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Continue reading below the image.

Quick summary of the issue

The issue at hand is this: the glass baby bottles by NUK — pictured above — (as well as bottles from Pigeon, Lansinoh, Tabor Place, Wee Sprouts, and other brands) are painted with high Lead-content paint on the part that one can expect WILL be touched by a baby when the baby is holding the bottle/ feeding themselves.

Why is this a problem if the U.K. regulations say the Lead doesn’t leach or migrate?

Leach testing and migration testing are only done for a product at the time of manufacture. Products are not tested (in order to determine if they meet regulatory limits) using real-world scenarios to determine safety. Said another way, baby bottles are not first used daily for months (including being washed and sterilized many times a day) and then tested for whether or not micro-particulate Lead can wear off on to the baby’s hands (from the painted coating). They are only tested when new, with no wear, use, or compromises to the coating.

Baby bottles (with normal use as intended) are typically sterilized by submerging them in boiling water or by using hot steam in a bottle sterilizer appliance. Sterilizing bottles in this way (in combination with normal cleaning with detergents and scrub brushes on a daily basis) causes the paint on the outside to deteriorate and wear over time. It only takes a microscopic amount of Lead (literally an invisible amount) to poison a child.

There should be NO allowable amount of Lead in the painted decorative markings on baby bottles in 2022. It is completely unnecessary. Lead-free paints are available. The brand in question (at the center of this recall — NUK) ALSO makes baby bottles with Lead-free paint (for the California market, which we have tested and confirmed as Lead-free). There is no reason for NUK to be using high Lead paint on some of their products and Lead-free paint on others. This article discusses how much Lead it takes to poison a child.

More problems with today’s recall…

Problem: Babies everywhere matter — not just babies in the USA!

The issue with today’s recall is that NUK tried to downplay the Lead paint concern in their public statements (see screenshot below), first talking about how they are a “trusted brand” and then — through their “carefully chosen language” — writing that only 100 units are being recalled in the U.S., which as an isolated statement will easily mislead consumers to think that only 100 units (related to this issue) were painted with Lead paint. This is not the case.

When any baby bottle is manufactured (given the nature of the manufacturing process), a minimum of THOUSANDS of units are made at a time (tens of thousands, possibly even), and while allegedly “only” 100 of these Lead-painted NUK bottles were purchased/sold in the United States (via Amazon), NUK is taking NO RESPONSIBILITY for the thousands that were purchased and sold elsewhere (being used by babies around the world). We had bottles shipped to us from Cyprus that contained Lead paint and also had a friend of Lead Safe Mama from New Zealand send us a NUK bottle she purchased there and confirmed that it, too was positive for Lead paint at levels comparable to the bottles purchased on Amazon in the United States.

Through this messaging, NUK is also implying that only American babies matter. This is 100% unacceptable! The image below is from Instagram this morning (clearly moms around the world are concerned)!

Continue reading below the image from Instagram this morning.
This is a post on Instagram from a mom in Albania:

Update: July 30, 2022 — from another NON-USA based advocate… (emphasizing our assertion that NUK needs to make this a worldwide recall)! This mama is in Greece. (Shared with permission.)

Here’s the text from this post — or you can click the image below to see it on Instagram. (Please continue reading below this image.)

“Ανάκληση μπιμπερό NUK στην Αμερική
Προ δύο ημερών, 28-07-2022, ο CPSC, ο αμερικανικός οργανισμός ασφάλειας καταναλωτικών αγαθών ανακοίνωσε την ανάκληση βρεφικών μπουκαλιών NUK, λόγω υπέρβασης του ορίου μολύβδου στη βαφή των διακοσμητικών τους στοιχείων.

Ο μόλυβδος προκαλεί μη αναστρέψιμες βλάβες σε βρέφη και παιδιά, ακόμη και σε ποσότητες αόρατες στο ανθρώπινο μάτι.
Για περαιτέρω πληροφορίες ανατρέξτε σε παλαιότερο post ή στον λογαριασμό της ακτιβίστριας Tamara Rubin @leadsafemama.

#babybottle, #μπιμπερο, #γυαλινομπιμπερο, #leadsafemama, #nontoxicliving, #safebabybottle, #glassbabybottle, #ecoliving, #grhealthyliving, #safekids, #βρεφικομπουκαλι, #βρεφικόμπουκάλι, #productrecall“

Problem) What about the other 7 bottles we reported around the same time — bottles that have not yet been recalled?

Only ONE type of NUK bottle — in ONE pattern (the gray and white stars) — is covered by this particular recall, even when all of the other bottles pictured in the image above were equally toxic (in terms of significantly exceeding the federal limits for Lead in children’s products here in the United States). Most importantly, perhaps, is that all of these other bottles were also reported to the CPSC as being in violation of the Consumer Product Improvement Act of 2008 at the same time as the One.Single.Bottle. the CPSC recalled recently. It’s incomprehensible (at least from the perspective of a parent) that they would not be issuing a recall for ALL offending Lead-painted patterns at the same time.

Continue reading below the image of the recalled bottle.

A subset of problem #2
Their recalled product quantity is wrong, no matter how you look at it.

There’s no way the NUK recall of 100 bottles even includes a fraction of the Lead-painted NUK glass baby bottles in the United States. For some background, please understand there are likely more than 20,000,000 (twenty million) children under age 4 in the United States today — probably more with all of the pandemic babies! (Source below — continue reading below the image.) This fact alone makes it difficult to believe only 100 of the Lead-painted NUK glass baby bottles were sold in the United States.

Separately, I find it really hard to believe that (with the millions of babies here in the United States — image below), the 12 Lead-painted NUK bottles that I personally own might amount to more than 10% of the number of recalled products. That’s a ridiculous concept! But then, please do realize I have seven different Lead-painted NUK patterns in storage (12 bottles total) — so of my 12 bottles, actually only four have the specific recalled pattern.

Looking at what we know about these bottles (in attempt to determine how many Lead-painted NUK bottles are ACTUALLY likely in the United States at this time):

First, we must consider the fact that there are at LEAST six (6) more Lead-painted NUK patterns, based on testing done here at LeadSafeMama.com.
Extrapolating from NUK’s apparent logic, which seems to assert that only 100 units per pattern made it into the United States, (since they are recalling 100 of the gray and white star pattern bottles) we then have a possible pool of at least 600 other bottles (700 total, minimum) that should have been recalled.
I don’t think 700 is accurate either. (What about the 12 Lead-painted NUK bottles in Lead Safe Mama LLC’s toxic product storage right now — are they counting mine? They are from multiple sources, including Amazon.)
Then there is the issue of American parents purchasing these Lead-painted NUK baby bottles directly from other European vendors (something I would expect NUK does not have the capacity to track).

Here’s one comment on our Instagram post illustrating that USA-based moms can easily buy and are intentionally buying these bottles from European vendors because they want to ensure they receive a safer product, they believe Europe has safer standards, and they believe that a European manufacturer would not ever manufacture bottles with Lead paint right where the baby touches the bottle. (You can participate in that comment thread by clicking the image below.) Shared with permission.

With all of these considerations, there are likely MANY, MANY MORE Lead-painted NUK bottles here in the United States. This statement from NUK that the recall only includes 100 bottles is a BLATANT attempt at DAMAGE CONTROL.

Problem: NUK has known about this since at least 2019!

If you would like to read the full history of this issue — since Lead Safe Mama, LLC first discovered (in 2019) that glass NUK brand baby bottles are painted with Lead paint — please check out the links below, which are listed in chronological order. Each of the bottles tested and reported here on this website was purchased and sent to me by a reader of this site. All of the work here is a community-collaborative effort in that way — fully community-sourced.

Links from articles related to this issue here on LeadSafeMama.com

Given the work here at Lead Safe Mama, LLC (that initiated this recall) is FULLY INDEPENDENT — and not funded by any agency or company but instead funded and directed by LeadSafeMama.com readers, I will use this opportunity to invite you to make a contribution in support of this work (or help out in other ways) so we can keep doing what we do. Here’s the link with all the ways you can support this work. The simplest way to support this work (and the action that will have the biggest impact) is to share our graphics and links on social media. (To do so, click on the graphic at the top of this page, drag it to your desktop, and copy the short link at the top of the page to share with it.)

Other 2022 Lead Safe Mama, LLC initiated Recalls
(Demonstrating our science is legitimate — in case you need to share with anyone who might express otherwise.)

This year (in the past two months, actually) the CPSC has already initiated TWO recalls for Lead paint on children’s products for items tested by/discovered by Lead Safe Mama, LLC. Here’s the earlier recall information for the Jumping Jumperoo toy.

Images below are screenshots from the CPSC Recall page 7/28/22

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2 Comments

Brenda says:

July 29, 2022 at 11:45 am

Abhorrent response. I urge all who are concerned to follow the link for Recall notice on NUK’s site: July 28, 2022 and voice your outrage by scrolling down to the company’s contact link. Go one step further by posting a review to educate others about this company’s business practices on sites you use that sell Nuk products.

MK says:

April 27, 2023 at 8:42 am

Do you know if the Nuk Simply Natural bottles contain lead? https://www.nuk-usa.com/bottles/simply-natural/nuk-simply-natural-glass-bottle-4-oz/SAP_2108017.html Thank you!

The CPSC issued a recall for the Lead painted baby bottles we discovered last year — but they only recalled 1 of 6 NUK Lead-painted designs