In November of 2022 Green Sprouts’ owner said she was “surprised” to learn I found Lead in their stainless baby bottles – however, Green Sprouts knew of the issue as early as June of 2021.

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November 18, 2022 – Friday
Continuing real-time coverage of the Green Sprouts Leaded Stainless Steel Baby Bottle train-wreck… 

The bottles being recalled are the bottles pictured above. Throughout the day today I have continued to get communications from Lead Safe Mama readers with new bits of information directly related to or tangential to this product recall…  This afternoon I got the following comment from a reader (Stephanie) on social media [I am not going to add anything to editorialize this communication thread – as I believe it speaks for itself, in terms of being a commentary about the ethically-questionable behavior of Green Sprouts when responding to concerns for “defects” in their products – which includes the presence of LEAD in products that they are selling as “safer” and “healthier” choices]. And to be clear: the presence of Lead in a baby bottle is actually not amenable to being damage-control spin-doctored, by using the softer term “defect”, which sounds like something mundane, ordinary – perhaps even every-so-often beyond the reasonable control of a manufacturer — no, the choice to accept a blob of Lead as an acceptable idea for use on the bottom of a baby bottle falls under an entirely different category of terms: at minimum – in the case of an isolated incident – it constitutes an egregious failure on the part of a manufacturer to oversee your supply chain. But that’s the most charitable possible interpretation…

In the case of a history of such issues—involving multiple incidents of a variety of confirmed separate product safety hazards, across a manufacturer’s product line, over an extended period of time — and compounded by a consistent pattern of lack of accountability, denials, dissembling rationalizations, and louder marketing hype and aggressive “offensive-defense” on the part of the manufacturer in question, it begins to strain credulity to simply give a pass – “the benefit of doubt” – and accept the latest example as a mere “defect”…particularly in light of the more bizarre aspects of this particular saga (like knowingly handing out the “defective” bottles as halloween treats in the face of an imminent recall of the hazardous items???!). It is hard to even “grok” the level of… what? —  cavalier negligence? callous indifference? calculated self-interest? That they have known about this serious infant & toddler Lead exposure hazard far longer than even previously disclosed, and did…nothing at all about it?! I.Can’t.Even.Anymore.

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I responded to this mama that I would like to see this communication thread and share it in a follow-up piece. She then e-mailed me the screenshots of that conversation and I am sharing those with you below. First, Stephanie’s cover note to me:

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Here are the screen shots Stephanie sent me of her communication with Green Sprouts from June of 2021:

 

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Some additional background information:

• This article explains what a Leaded sealing dot is (and looks like) on an insulated stainless steel bottle.
• This article has all of the recent Lead Safe Mama communications with the owner of Green Sprouts.
• This article has our original published findings about Lead in these bottles (from September 20, 2022)
• This article has the violation report filed for these bottles by Lead Safe Mama, LLC.
• This article has the full recall text from the Green Sprouts website – from a page that has since been removed from their site.

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