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January 22, 2023 — Sunday
The following letter has been written to use with a Change.org petition demanding that KitchenAid stop manufacturing and selling Lead-contaminated products. The link to sign the petition is HERE. Some of the supporting documentation for this petition (previous articles published here on LeadSafeMama.com can be found using the links below).
- Post with a video showing Lead Safe Mama testing a KitchenAid Paddle — purchased new at Walmart in December 2022 (positive for Lead).
- A 2017 Lead Safe Mama, LLC article with Lead levels for several different paddles.
- A comprehensive overview article linking to all other Lead Safe Mama articles with test results for these products — from December 2022.
- Our response to KitchenAid’s boilerplate denial (“Throughout our 111-year history, Whirlpool …”) to customers.
- A template for customers to use when calling KitchenAid to request (demand) Lead-free replacement parts.
Petition Letter to KitchenAid
Dear KitchenAid (& parent company Whirlpool),
You’ve known about and have been denying the presence of Lead in your stand mixer attachments since Tamara Rubin (Lead Safe Mama, LLC/ LeadSafeMama.com) first brought this to the public’s (and your) attention nearly 10 years ago (in 2014). You are also aware that the cords on your stand mixers test positive for either high levels of Antimony (a known carcinogen) or high levels of Lead (a potent neurotoxicant), which do not belong in our kitchens. Additionally, you are aware that the brightly-colored enamel coatings on your stand mixers can test positive for high levels of Lead if manufactured before a certain date.
Your stand mixers are in kitchens throughout the world. You are a trusted brand. You have intentionally designed these products to be “heirloom-quality,” so you are aware they are in use in families for generations. KitchenAid stand mixers are not your typical modern appliance designed for planned obsolescence. You price these stand mixers accordingly. They are gifted for significant milestone occasions — weddings, anniversaries, graduations, house-warmings, etc. As a result, consumers expect them to be safe for use with their families for generations.
The levels of Lead found in both your newly-manufactured and vintage heirloom products are not considered to be illegal since current regulatory standards only limit total Lead content in newly-manufactured “items specifically and intentionally designed for use by children.” Kitchenware —including, but not limited to appliances — is not considered to be a category of items “intended for use by children.” The total Lead content (as detectable with an XRF instrument) found in both your vintage and modern products — and specifically your food-contact mixer attachments (burnished, bare metal, and coated) — is at levels that would be considered illegal today if your products were made for use by children.
Lead levels of 90 ppm in the paint or coating, or 100 ppm in the substrate (base metal) of any item, is considered illegal in items intended for use by children. Your stand mixer attachments typically test positive for Lead in the range of 300 ppm to 2000 ppm (and higher) in the substrate. The substrate on the bare metal attachments is always exposed. The substrate on the coated attachments becomes exposed with wear and use (under normal circumstances) when the mixer is used as intended.
While your legal team may argue that your stand mixer and attachment products are not intended for use by children, your marketing department (and customer base) clearly has a different understanding. In practice, not only are your products used by children every day, they are used by generations of children within the same family; mothers, grandmothers, aunts (and fathers, grandfathers, uncles) — all look forward to creating memories using your mixers with the children in their lives.
Your marketing campaigns throughout the decades have helped craft and reinforce the ubiquitous American family tradition of children using your KitchenAid stand mixer with their elders — especially for baking around holidays and special occasions. What child doesn’t remember licking the beater paddle clean after making cookies with grandma?!
Continue reading below the KitchenAid promotional image
captured from their Instagram profile in December 2022.
You cannot claim ignorance of the fact that children all over the world use your KitchenAid stand mixers (and Lead-contaminated attachments) every day.
As all federal (and international) agencies agree that there is no safe level of Lead exposure for a child, we your customers demand the following:
- You cease using Lead-contaminated Aluminum substrates in all of your food-contact mixer attachments.
- You manufacture and offer free replacement attachments for anyone requesting them — 100% free of Lead in both the substrates and coatings. Since you already are manufacturing several Lead-free options — making them available as an “upgrade” in Stainless Steel — it seems it should be (relatively) simple for you to extend the same manufacturing standards to all of your attachments.
- You issue a formal and public recall for all “burnished metal” and uncoated aluminum attachments for all models now and in the past, and for all attachments for which the plastic (nylon) coating has chipped or deteriorated in any way.
- You offer free replacement of Lead-contaminated electrical cords for your stand mixers (and you note and publish what year you stopped using Lead in your electrical cords). With this, you also issue a public statement that thorough hand washing should be employed (before preparing food and after touching the older Lead-contaminated or newer Antimony-contaminated power cords).
- You issue a public statement warning consumers that the trend of sanding and repainting the enamel bodies of these stand mixers is dangerous because of the historic levels of Lead in your vintage enamels (and with that, you publish what year you stopped using Lead in your enamels).
- Separate from the KitchenAid stand mixer considerations, you issue a formal public recall for your highly Lead-contaminated banana yellow silicone spatula (link) and any other Lead-contaminated silicone baking products (or other Lead-contaminated products) you may have manufactured that one could reasonably expect a family to use with their children in preparing meals.
Absent taking these measures, we pledge to cease buying all products from KitchenAid and your parent company, Whirlpool. We further pledge to cease buying products from distributors/vendors that also have track records (current and past) of selling Lead-contaminated products and that currently sell your Lead-contaminated stand mixer attachments. These vendors include Sur La Table, Williams Sonoma, and Crate and Barrel.
We know you can do better for our families.
We trusted you.
We want to be able to trust you again.
We trusted you.
We want to be able to trust you again.
Signed,
Your name here!
[Please personalize this letter as you see fit — including sharing a personal story if you have one.]
~ End Petition Letter ~
Introduction: 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).
My mom purchased one of these in white around 20 years ago. Does the white color contain as much lead as the other colors?
Tamara,
I wish I had known about this sooner. I do thank you for fighting for those who are unaware.
Because I found your instagram, through another user, and your website, my family and I have have gotten rid of most of our ‘possibly’ leaded and other heavy metaled food storage and cooking utensils. I was also able to get Kitchen Aid to send me, free of charge btw, a new set of their STAINLESS STEEL dough hook, whisk and mixing blade attatchments.
Good luck fighting the good fight.
That’s amazing that they replaced them for free! Did you have to say anything specific?
Hi Haven,
All I did was tell them I am having 3rd party testing done and I would not accept the party line nor accept the 20% discount. When that failed, I asked to speak with a manager. Yes, I went all “Karen” but I think protecting your health warrants it.
Wow we have one in our kitchen. I’m appalled
I was shocked to learn this. My mother made hundred of cakes with her mixer that I now have.
I will not be using it again until attachments have been replaced by the company.