Lab-Tested Safer Toothpaste #8!

 

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Published September 20, 2025
Saturday

 

Hi all!

A quick note right now, (but more soon!):

Here’s our aflink for the latest lab-tested safer toothpaste choice we have identified through the Lead Safe Mama, LLC Community Collaborative Laboratory Testing Initiative: https://amzn.to/3VuBObh

We will be publishing this lab report shortly. The low thresholds of detection for this Weleda Natural Salt Toothpaste product were as follows:

• Arsenic: < 10 ppb
• Lead: < 5 ppb
• Mercury: < 5 ppb
• Cadmium: < 5 ppb

We also created a GoFundMe campaign for testing this toothpaste (here’s that link), but it has yet to fully fund.

I chose to send this product into the lab for testing anyway because my son needed new toothpaste!

The day we landed in Hawaii (a month ago) to get Avi set up for his second year of college, we went to the Honolulu Whole Foods (Ala Moana, Queen Street) and every single toothpaste we saw on the shelf was a known Lead-contaminated product (or highly likely to be Lead-contaminated based on the ingredient profile), except for this Weleda product, which we had not yet tested.

I knew we had launched a campaign for this toothpaste (after several people in the Lead Safe Mama community nominated it for testing) and, given the ingredient profile, I thought there might be a chance it would test clean. I also thought, if it DID test clean, it would be really great (for everyone, including my son) to have a known, clean toothpaste that might also be available at their local store.

One of the other safe options we’ve found, Miessence Toothpaste, is from Australia and is not currently shipping to the United States because of the tariffs.

The Essential Oxygen toothpaste was no longer available at Whole Foods in Honolulu.

The UK Aquafresh Fresh & Minty safer choice can only be bought in person in the UK, or online for a premium.

The rest of the toothpaste options on our safer choices list are baby products.

So… yay! It was a gamble to test this new product, but it paid off! #Woot!

What this emphasizes for me is how much we can actually learn from a product’s ingredient profile to anticipate whether it might be contaminated with heavy metals. The logic involved in evaluating products for safety based on their ingredient profile — without sending each and every product into a lab for independent, third-party testing — is not rocket science. It’s relatively simple, and these are some of the patterns and consistent rules emerging from our lab-testing initiative: 

• Products with Zinc Oxide are likely to test positive for Lead and Cadmium.
• Cinnamon is likely to test positive for Lead and Cadmium (and sometimes Mercury).
• Chocolate and Cocoa products are likely to test positive for Lead and Cadmium.
• Potatoes are likely to test positive for Cadmium (and sometimes Lead).
• Seaweed products are likely to test positive for significant levels of Arsenic.
• Products with Bentonite Clay are likely to test positive for high levels of Lead (and other contaminants).
• Products with Calcium Carbonate are likely to test positive for Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, and sometimes Arsenic.
• Products with Hydrated Silica are likely to test positive for Lead.
• Products containing Titanium Dioxide may also test positive for Lead (both are carcinogens).
• Celtic Salt and Mined Salts (including Himalayan Salt) are likely to test positive for concerning levels of Lead and other heavy metals.

Gathered together, these emerging patterns act as a basic guideline for helping us make safer choices. Again, this is not rocket science, just some considerations to take into account when shopping that will help you limit your family’s exposure to heavy metals.

Stay safe out there, friends! Happy tooth-brushing!

If you appreciate this information and would like to make a contribution in support of the Lead Safe Mama, LLC Community Collaborative Laboratory Testing Initiative — especially given we did not raise the full funding needed for testing and reporting on this toothpaste product — you can do so via the campaign link for this toothpaste, or our general fund GoFundME campaign. We couldn’t do this work without your support.

The best way of supporting this initiative at the moment is joining us on Patreon as a member (if you have not yet), contributing even just $2.50 or $3 a month (whatever you can afford). Hundreds of small gifts add up to make a big dent in our funding shortfall for lab testing and reporting — making it possible for us to queue more products than we otherwise would be able to test and report on each month (check out the graphic below for our latest Patreon update). Here’s the link to our Patreon home page if you want to increase your contribution (or join us as a new paid member!): http://www.patreon.com/LeadSafeMama

Thank you!

Tamara Rubin
& The Lead Safe Mama Team

Reminder: As soon as we reach 5,000 Patreon Members (including paid and free members), we will be hosting some “Flash Giveaways” for several of my favorite Lead-free things! So please do stick around for that, and invite your friends to participate with you in joining us on Patreon, too. Thank you!

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