maymom® glass baby bottle purchased on Amazon: as high as 21,400 ppm Lead in the paint (over 90 ppm Lead is illegal in children’s items)

ByTamara Posted: Updated:
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Sunday — August 6, 2023

Lead-Painted Baby Bottle not yet Recalled

This article is about yet another brand of baby bottles manufacturing and selling Lead-painted glass baby bottles that were available for sale on Amazon up through this year (2023). Here is a direct Amazon link to this product so you can see it in the wild*. Hopefully the CPSC will officially recall this bottle (and all of the other Lead-painted glass bottles from this brand) soon — and this link will no longer take you to a product listing. To date, there has not yet been an official recall for this product, and there is no mention of this product being recalled on the manufacturer’s website either. We will be filing a violation notice with the CPSC today, in case an official recall is not yet in progress (as of today [8/6/2023], there is no mention about this bottle being recalled on the CPSC’s website).

Good News, Everyone!

The good news is that this particular bottle is showing as “no longer available” on the Amazon listing — as are the other glass bottles from this brand. Separately, it appears they have also taken down the glass bottles from the company’s website (link here). Please note that all examples of glass bottles (in all patterns) from this brand that we have tested have tested positive for high (illegal/unsafe) levels of Lead in the paint, in addition to several other toxic heavy metals (Cadmium, Antimony, Mercury, etc.).

Background timeline:
April 2023 to now (August 6, 2023) …

  • April 2023: We first were made aware of the fact that the bottles from this brand were painted with Lead paint — following a discussion we had with Eric, the owner of Scitus, in which he offered to help us in our mission of trying to bring greater attention to the issue of Lead paint on glass baby bottles manufactured and sold today (given so many that we have investigated have tested positive for extremely dangerous, illegal levels of Lead and other metallic neurotoxicants).
    • After one of our first conversations, Eric contacted me and informed me of some preliminary testing he had done using a new (experimental) Lead-testing product he is in the process of developing.
    • In response to me telling him that I had found so many Lead-painted glass baby bottles available for sale on Amazon, Eric ordered one of these maymom® bottles (chosen relatively at random) and tested it for Lead. He then followed up with me to inform me of the results of his testing. Prior to this, I had not heard of this particular bottle brand.
    • Eric sent me the bottle he had tested (so I could do follow-up testing using XRF technology, and we could compare results).
    • I then also purchased a different version of this product on Amazon (the one pictured in this article), and had that sent to me directly.
    • We (Lead Safe Mama, LLC) then conducted our own preliminary (XRF) testing of the maymom products.
    • Toward the end of April, I mentioned this brand briefly in Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s articles and posts — specifically including images of Lead-contaminated maymom products in several social media posts and articles on this website, while we were developing the content (imagery, design, and language) for our NYC Subway PSA Campaign (raising awareness about the issue of Lead-painted glass baby bottles in general, and specifically about the products pictured in the PSA Campaign).
    • Once we had confirmed test results for two different versions of this brand of glass baby bottles, we chose to incorporate images of the two different patterns/ sizes of maymom Lead-painted glass baby bottles in our final graphics for the New York City Subway PSA Campaign. 
    • In late-April of 2023, we hired a professional photographer to photograph an assortment of the Lead-painted baby bottles (the exact items we had tested and found to contain high levels of Lead, including these two different examples of maymom products), so we could use those images in the campaign. (It was very important for us to photograph the exact items we had tested and found to be positive for Lead — as a way to protect us against potential denials/efforts to sow doubt, and/or legal threats from the companies we were calling out by featuring their products in the PSA Campaign.)
  • May/June/July 2023: The NYC Subway PSA Campaign launched in late-May, and officially ran through mid-July 2023.
    • This PSA Campaign included printed PSA panels (each 70 inches long by 11 inches tall) installed along the lower edge of the ceiling in over 2,100 New York City Subway cars (more than 1/3 of all of New York’s Subway cars), with a primary intention behind the PSA Campaign being to alert the public of the issue with Lead-painted baby bottles being manufactured and sold today (link with more information about that PSA campaign here).
    • In the articles linked to our PSA Campaign, we encouraged people who owned any of the bottles pictured to file violation reports with the CPSC (as we advocate that consumers should do in the case of all these types of confirmed blatant, egregious violations of CPSC children’s safety regulations!).
  • August 2023: Fast forward to today (this weekend), and fans and friends of Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s work who are living in (or visiting) New York City have told us (as recently as this weekend) that many of the panels from our PSA Campaign are still up in the New York City Subways today. <yay — continued coverage of the issue!> Please continue reading below the image.

Victory! (But not quite…)

So on one level, it is an amazing victory that our PSA campaign in the New York City Subways had the desired effect of spreading the word/ raising awareness, and getting these particular maymom products off the market! (I just learned about this successful outcome today, as I was looking to confirm the current links for the products on Amazon, and maymom’s website for this article — which initially was simply going to be a report of the full XRF test results for this bottle!)

On another level, this is not quite yet a true victory … as it is a “silent” victory, and to have the necessary impact (of protecting children in the families who bought these products before sales ceased) it needs to be LOUD and BIG, and COVERED BY MAINSTREAM MEDIA. The product — Lead-painted maymom® brand glass bottles for breast milk storage and feeding infants — has not yet been officially recalled, and it will take a broad-sweeping CPSC-initiated highly-public recall of these products to truly help make sure these Lead-painted bottles are not found in the hands of babies everywhere.

Given we have the precedent of the CPSC issuing a recall last summer for one of the Lead-painted NUK brand glass baby bottles (reported a year earlier by Lead Safe Mama, LLC), we hope the CPSC will quickly do what they need to in issuing a formal and official recall for any and all Lead-painted maymom glass baby feeding products.

One request:

The work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC has now been directly responsible for several highly visible/ well-covered (in the media) baby bottle and child feeding product recalls in the past couple of years, yet the news coverage almost never mentions our role in this work. Most recently (in July 2023), most the mainstream media (CBS, NBC, CNN, USA Today, The New York Times, etc.) utterly neglected to mention our role in precipitating the recall of 346,000 Lead-contaminated children’s cups sold by Cupkin (you can read our original report from January 2023, here).

If the journalists/ media organizations covering these recalls were to simply include a mention of our central (and certainly newsworthy) role in these recalls, with a simple sentence like:

“this issue was first discovered and reported on by the woman-owned small business for consumer goods safety and childhood Lead-poisoning prevention, Lead Safe Mama, LLC, based in Portland, Oregon.”
Or even,
“an issue uncovered by Lead Safe Mama, LLC — a woman-owned small business based in Portland, Oregon,”

that would go a long way in helping us generate the funding to continue doing what we do. If reporters wanted to make their stories more engaging (as a “human-interest story” — which is always more interesting for the public), they could even go so far as to note that:

“the work of a small business — owned by a mother of acutely Lead-poisoned children — was responsible for the initial investigation and reporting that precipitated this recall. Tamara Rubin (owner of Lead Safe Mama, LLC) uses XRF technology to test consumer goods for Lead and maintains an extensive, freely-searchable database of test results for thousands of consumer goods on her company’s website LeadSafeMama.com; she tests items sent to her from her readers all over the world.”

This is not a “complaint,” rather a factual & frustrating statement of reality…

… And a request for due diligence and consequent fair acknowledgment in news coverage of the stories in which the successful — critical — efforts/ role of Lead Safe Mama, LLC’s work (and our world-wide parent-advocacy community) in these important recalls is consistently never mentioned in mainstream media. This is a plea for the sorely-needed visibility and support that simple acknowledgement engenders.

In the absence of mentioning the source of these recalls (in the absence of the news media giving a woman-owned small business credit for the work we do), we are still not covering the costs of our work here — and our ability to continue doing what we do is in jeopardy. (Largely due to costs related to our PSA campaign in the New York City Subways, we currently have an operating deficit for the 2023 calendar year of about $33,000, which is debt we cannot continue carrying for much longer while also staying in business; our long-term debt related to this work [including but not limited to significant legal costs] is approaching $300,000.)

For anyone interested in supporting this work with a contribution, here is a link with ways to do that. While the financial support from our readership is amazing (and very welcome), the effects of mainstream media reporting credit given/ recognition of our work is what would really impact our bottom line in a heartbeat. If you see our work being covered in the media, without the source of the story being mentioned, please take a moment to write the reporters and ask them to update this by crediting the source! While I could (strongly) assert that if this business were owned by a man we would be getting credit for the work we do, we don’t need to get into that discussion at this moment … But I do put it out there for your consideration. 😉

Thank you for taking the time to read this!

Product recalls that our research and reporting has been responsible for this year (and last):

2023 Lead Safe Mama, LLC Initiated Recalls

  1. March 2023: Cupkin — Insulated Stainless Steel Children’s Cups (CPSC announcement: July 2023)
  2. February 2023: Bindle Bottle — Insulated Stainless Steel Water Bottle Recall (FDA)

2022 Lead Safe Mama, LLC Initiated Recalls

  1. November 2022: Green Sprouts Insulated Stainless Baby Bottle (Leaded Bottle Recall)
  2. July 2022: Jumping Jumperoo (Lead Paint Recall)
  3. July 2022: Nuk Glass Baby Bottles with Gray & White Star Design (Lead Paint Recall)

It looks like none of maymom’s glass bottles are currently available on Amazon at the moment, which is an excellent outcome of our NYC Subway PSA Campaign that included two images of bottles from this brand:

Here’s a screenshot of the Amazon listing for this product today: 8/6/2023

Here’s a screenshot of the maymom site for those who might be curious.

*Amazon links are affiliate links. In this case we don’t want you to buy this product but we just want you to see that it is still available for sale on Amazon. If you do purchase something (anything) after clicking on one of our Amazon affiliate links Lead Safe Mama, LLC may receive a percentage of what you spend at no extra cost to you.

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).

XRF Test Results for the maymom Bottle Pictured

Reading #1) on the footprints image of the design
60-second reading

  • Cadmium (Cd): 215 +/- 11 ppm
  • Lead (Pb): 16,600 +/- 300 ppm
  • Titanium (Ti): 17,500 +/- 1,200 ppm
  • Cobalt (Co): 1,341 +/- 97 ppm
  • Nickel (Ni): 1,418 +/- 88 ppm
  • Zinc (Zn): 3,257 +/- 99 ppm
  • Zirconium (Zr): 734 +/- 23 ppm
  • Indium (In): 14 +/- 8 ppm
  • Platinum (Pt): 529 +/- 81 ppm
  • Bismuth (Bi): 2,689 +/- 75 ppm
  • No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.

Reading #2) on the rattle image of the design
60-second reading

  • Cadmium (Cd): 139 +/- 8 ppm
  • Lead (Pb): 11,100 +/- 200 ppm
  • Titanium (Ti): 13,700 +/- 1,200 ppm
  • Cobalt (Co): 1,025 +/- 84 ppm
  • Nickel (Ni): 917 +/- 73 ppm
  • Zinc (Zn): 2,308 +/- 77 ppm
  • Zirconium (Zr): 655 +/- 19 ppm
  • Niobium (Nb): 228 +/- 18 ppm
  • Indium (In): 21 +/- 7 ppm
  • Antimony (Sb): 20 +/- 12 ppm
  • Platinum (Pt): 265 +/- 64 ppm
  • Bismuth (Bi): 1,801 +/- 55 ppm
  • No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.

Reading #3) on the green leaves of the design
60-second reading

  • Cadmium (Cd): 823 +/- 28 ppm
  • Lead (Pb): 21,400 +/- 400 ppm
  • Titanium (Ti): 3,227 +/- 897 ppm
  • Chromium (Cr): 2,092 +/- 316 ppm
  • Zinc (Zn): 154 +/- 21 ppm
  • Zirconium (Zr): 693 +/- 22 ppm
  • Indium (In): 18 +/- 8 ppm
  • Platinum (Pt): 394 +/- 75 ppm
  • Mercury (Hg): 56 +/- 22 ppm
  • No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.

Reading #4) on the pink butterfly of the design
60-second reading

  • Cadmium (Cd): 321 +/- 13 ppm
  • Lead (Pb): 17,100 +/- 300 ppm
  • Titanium (Ti): 13,600 +/- 1,200 ppm
  • Zirconium (Zr): 617 +/- 19 ppm
  • Indium (In): 15 +/- 7 ppm
  • Antimony (Sb): 22 +/- 13 ppm
  • Platinum (Pt): 345 +/- 67 ppm
  • Mercury (Hg): 41 +/- 20 ppm
  • No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.

Reading #5) on the unpainted glass side of the bottle
60-second reading

  • Cadmium (Cd): 16 +/- 4 ppm
  • Zirconium (Zr): 383 +/- 12 ppm
  • Niobium (Nb): 310 +/- 16 ppm
  • Indium (In): 17 +/- 6 ppm
  • No other metals were detected in consumer goods mode.

~ End ~

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