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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).

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May 1, 2023 — Monday

Key Points:

• In 2023, Williams Sonoma is (still) manufacturing/branding and selling dishware (meant for food-use purposes/everyday dishes) with high levels of Lead in the glaze on the food surface of the dish.
• The food surface blue glaze for the dish pictured above (purchased in April 2023 and delivered new in May 2023) tested positive for 11,700 ppm Lead using XRF technology.
• For context: items manufactured “for use by children” are illegal if the paint, glaze, or coating of an item tests positive for levels over 90 ppm Lead.
• Dishes are not regulated as “items intended for use by children,” so the above-noted regulatory standard (Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act limits for Lead in the glaze of items intended for use by children) is considered “irrelevant.” However, considering the overwhelming quantity of settled scientific and medical consensus on the long-term, cumulative harm caused by human exposure to even low levels of Lead, this constitutes, in reality, just a dangerous and demonstrably disastrous regulatory loophole — because (of course) we all know that children also use the dishes in our homes.
• I began reporting on Williams Sonoma’s apparent lack of concern for the widespread use of Lead in their products (confirmed by repeated XRF testing on many of their Williams Sonoma branded dishes manufactured over the past 20 years or so) as early as 2009 (when I first began testing consumer goods for Lead).
• Following more than a decade of publishing periodic new product test results for Williams Sonoma dishes still routinely using highly-Leaded glazes, we called Williams Sonoma out again in February of 2022 for selling newly-manufactured dishes with high levels of Lead in the food-surface glazes… and (for the first time ever) they responded to our findings, communicating with us via e-mail.
  • Here’s our first original article from February 2022.
  • Here’s our second original article from 2022.
  • Here’s the post with the full communications thread between Williams Sonoma representatives and Lead Safe Mama, LLC in February 2022.
• At the end of that thread, they said they would get back to us. However, we never heard back from Williams Sonoma after the above-linked February 2022 exchange.
• In April of 2023, a young bride contacted me with her concerns about the large CA Prop 65 warning label — citing Lead-exposure hazards — on the dishes she chose for her wedding registry (you can read her e-mail to me below). 
• This warning label appears to be Williams Sonoma’s response as a “fix” for the problem we brought to their attention in 2022.
• This is an insufficient remedy because (as evidenced by the young bride’s communication) the Prop 65 warning is NOT CLEAR or OBVIOUS at the point of purchase (on their website) — and is only obvious to the consumer once they receive the product in hand (with the giant and scary sticker on the back).
• A modern bride selecting dishes for her wedding registry on the website would have NO IDEA they are purchasing dishes with high-Lead glazes and (obviously) would not have made this particular choice if they knew up-front about the Lead content of the glaze on the food surface (regardless of compliance with insufficient Federal regulatory standards governing leaching at the time of manufacture).
• Consumers KNOW in 2023 that “Lead is bad,” and they are actively seeking to avoid Lead in dishware. On their website, Williams Sonoma is, in effect, “hiding” the fact their products are covered in high-Lead glazes by making the information nearly invisible/ relatively challenging to notice amidst the other content in their product listings.
• The Lead in these dishes is also a problem because people are purchasing them as their wedding china (to be held onto and used for decades). While the dishes may (and likely do) meet Leach-testing standards at the time of manufacture, with regular use over time (as intended, with food!), they WILL likely leach Lead at some point in the future when the surface of the dishes begins to wear because there is such a high level of Lead on the food surface. You can read more about that concern in this article.
• There is no excuse for using high-Lead glazes on dishware in 2023; instead of simply removing the Lead from their dishes, they are merely warning their customers of its presence. While this is undeniably better than nothing, their failure to responsibly test their glazes for Lead content, police their supply chain, and recall their Leaded dishes is outrageous and unconscionable.
• As a result of all of the above considerations (and primarily due to the associated political and ethical considerations), Lead Safe Mama, LLC recommends never purchasing any products from Williams Sonoma.
• We are also sharing this information with the nonprofit agency As You Sow so they can review the case to see if taking legal action against Williams Sonoma is warranted, given Williams Sonoma is a California-based company.

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Some additional relevant reading:

• To learn more about XRF testing, click here.
• To read more about Williams Sonoma products we have tested, click here.
• For the menu of this website (where you can look through different categories of items Lead Safe Mama, LLC has tested) — click here.
• To see XRF test results for more “Made in Portugal” pieces we have tested, click here.
• Click here to learn more about sending in an item from your home for Lead Safe Mama, LLC to test.

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April 2023 e-mail I received from a bride expressing concerns about the dishes pictured:

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Some answers to this bride’s questions:

1. Home test kits do not work for testing dishes, please don’t waste your money on a home test kit. You can read more about that here.
2. Don’t use these Williams Sonoma dishes; return them.
3. As noted above, I am sharing this information with As You Sow and we are going to see if we have any grounds for suing Williams Sonoma for their egregious behavior (their manufacturing processes, which continue to use unsafe levels of Lead on the food surfaces of dishes manufactured today — and that they are doing this without sufficient obvious relevant warnings to customers being fully visible prior to purchase). More on that below.
4. While these dishes presumably pass leach testing standards at the time of manufacture (which is legally required), there is no way to know when they might start leaching (a year in the future? Five years in the future? 10 years?) It is, for this reason, why there is no place in our homes for Lead on our food-use products.
5. The amount of Lead (ingested or inhaled) that can create significant birth complications (including infertility; miscarriage, and low birth weight in newborns) is literally microscopic and not a risk worth taking — ESPECIALLY if you are planning on having children. Lead in any product is not something you want to bring into your home and have to worry about in the future. You can read more about that — and the work of research scientist Dr. Felicia Rabito — at this link.
6. Please also consider watching my documentary film for some background on the issue. It’s a great crash course — and watching it now (before you conceive) is the best time to learn all you can about this issue! Here’s the link to the film.
7. Many of the modern Lenox patterns are Lead-free (although their older patterns have also been consistently high Lead), so you might want to look there for an alternate pattern for your wedding china.
8. Avoid any and all china patterns either “Made in Portugal,” “Made in Italy,” “Made in Mexico,” or other Latin-American/South American countries as those all tend to be very high in Lead, even with new patterns.
9. If something has a “Prop 65” label (as these did) don’t dismiss that — in most cases that means the product tests positive for high levels of Lead and should not be used for food (even if it passes Leach-testing standards at the time of manufacture).
10. Consider no longer purchasing anything at Williams Sonoma as their ethical standards are clearly questionable, at best.
11. I have other plain, Lead-free options for china on my shopping site (http://www.ShopLeadSafeMama.com), but seriously if you want to graduate from your potentially Leaded, chipped stuff from college, head out to the Dollar Store or Walmart and get some clear glass (unpainted, undecorated) dishes for about $1 each to use in the meantime. Let your FOOD decorate your table (a better expression of your love and your union than toxic, highly-decorated china any day)! If you want some higher quality clear glass dishes, I like Duralex* (they are made in France and consistently test Lead-free).

Amazon links are affiliate links. If you purchase something after clicking on a Lead Safe Mama, LLC affiliate link, we may receive a percentage of what you buy (at no extra cost to you).

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Full XRF Test Results for the Williams-Sonoma & Morris & Co. Dish Pictured

Reading #1) Center of Food Surface of Dish
60-second reading 

• Lead (Pb): 11,700 +/- 200 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 13 +/- 5 ppm
• Tin (Sn): 23 +/- 8 ppm
• Mercury (Hg): non-detect
• Selenium (Se): non-detect
• Barium (Ba): 124 +/- 32 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): 1,793 +/- 283 ppm
• Antimony (Sb): non-detect
• Copper (Cu): 64 +/- 22 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 5,537 +/- 139 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 2,867 +/- 167 ppm
• Platinum (Pt): 424 +/- 67 ppm
• Cobalt (Co): 5,995 +/- 206 ppm
• Bismuth (Bi): 105 +/- 26 ppm
• No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.

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Reading #2) White Undecorated Back of Dish
60-second reading 

• Lead (Pb): 43 +/- 9 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 13 +/- 5 ppm
• Tin (Sn): non-detect
• Mercury (Hg): non-detect
• Selenium (Se): non-detect
• Barium (Ba): 47 +/- 24 ppm
• Chromium (Cr): non-detect
• Antimony (Sb): non-detect
• Copper (Cu): non-detect
• Zinc (Zn): non-detect
• Iron (Fe): 2,519 +/- 155 ppm
• Platinum (Pt): non-detect
• Cobalt (Co): non-detect
• Bismuth (Bi): 38 +/- 8 ppm
• No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.

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Reading #3) Logo Area on Back of Dish
60-second reading 

• Lead (Pb): 3,597 +/- 82 ppm
• Cadmium (Cd): 9 +/- 4 ppm
• Tin (Sn): 15 +/- 7 ppm
• Mercury (Hg): non-detect
• Selenium (Se): non-detect
• Barium (Ba): non-detect
• Chromium (Cr): 389 +/- 239 ppm
• Antimony (Sb): non-detect
• Copper (Cu): 54 +/- 21 ppm
• Zinc (Zn): 1,766 +/- 63 ppm
• Iron (Fe): 2,793 +/- 165 ppm
• Platinum (Pt): 124 +/- 41 ppm
• Cobalt (Co): 1,775 +/- 110 ppm
• Bismuth (Bi): 40 +/- 15 ppm
• No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.

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Of particular interest are screenshots from the Williams Sonoma website that show what one sees when purchasing this set of dishes.

This is a note to my friends at As You Sow: Please go to the Williams Sonoma website and try to buy a set of these dishes. While the Prop 65 warning (image above) is technically “findable” it is not easy to find nor prominently displayed during the purchase process for these dishes. You have to click on a sub-button and, in fact, the language is dismissive — at a consumer’s first read-through, the language attempts to indicate that it is not concerning (just there in order to comply with regulatory standards, not clearly stating the dishes have high-Lead glaze). I think the warning’s lack of visibility during the online purchasing process (as shown in the screenshot series below) is key to any potential legal action against Williams Sonoma in this matter — but they should also be “punished” (fined? Publicly shamed? Reprimanded? Dragged through the mud, metaphorically?) for continuing to manufacture Leaded dishes. We need to work together in finding some way to close the loophole — given dishes SHOULD need to be CPSIA compliant as CHILDREN use dishware, too. Please scroll down to see the screens that come up as you try to purchase these dishes. The words “THESE DISHES HAVE LEADED GLAZE ON THE FOOD SURFACE” should (instead) be prominently displayed on the main splash screen when you go to purchase the dishes.

 

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Screenshots are in the order they come up when you try to purchase this product.

Image #1 when you search for this product:

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Image #2 when you search for this product:

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Image #3 when you search for this product —
note Prop 65 tab toward the bottom:

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Image #4 when you search for this product:

This is what comes up the FIRST TIME you click the Prop 65 tab (the little “+” sign) — just the underlined words “Proposition 65.” You then need to click on those underlined words to actually see the warning — a second click, which I expect most people will ignore.

Image #5 when you search for this product:

This is what comes up the SECOND TIME you click the Prop 65 tab: the words “Proposition 65.” The language as it is written doesn’t seem (from the perspective of the consumer) relevant to the dishes in question. The language should instead be clearly SPECIFIC to the product in question.

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