Lab-Tested Safer Toothpaste #8!

Published
September 20, 2025
Saturday

Hi all!

A quick note right now (more soon)!

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

We will be publishing the lab report for this shortly. The low thresholds of detection for this product were:

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

We had a GoFundMe for this toothpaste product (here’s that link), but it did not yet fully fund.

I chose to send this toothpaste in to the lab for testing anyway because…. my son needed toothpaste!

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

I knew we had the campaign up to test it (it had been nominated for testing by several people in the Lead Safe Mama community) — and, given the ingredient profile, I thought there might be a chance that it would test clean. I also thought that 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.

The Miessence Toothpaste is from Australia and they are 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 can only be bought in person in the UK or online for a premium.

& the rest of the toothpastes on our safer choices list are baby toothpastes.

So… yay! It was a gamble, but it paid off! #Woot!

What this emphasizes for me is how much we can actually learn from the ingredient profile of a product (in terms of anticipating whether or not that product might be contaminated with heavy metals). The logic involved in this conversation (in evaluating products for safety based on the ingredient profile — in the absence of sending each and every product into the lab for independent, third-party, laboratory testing) is not rocket science. It’s relatively simple and there are some basic and consistent rules emerging from our Lab testing initiative…. including:

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 with 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

These are some basic rules that are emerging to help guide us in making safer choices… not rocket science, just 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 amount of funding to cover the lab testing and reporting for this toothpaste product – (we couldn’t do this work without your support), you can make a contribution via the campaign link for this toothpaste, or via our general fund GoFundME campaign.

The best way to support this initiative at this moment is to join us here on Patreon as a member (if you have not yet) and sign up to contribute even just $2.50 or $3.00 a month (or whatever your can afford to contribute) in support of the work. Hundreds of small gifts add up to making a big dent in our funding shortfall for lab testing and reporting – making it possible to test and report on many more products than we otherwise would be able to test and report on each month (check out the graphic below for the 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 doing some Flash Giveaways for several of my favorite Lead-free things! So please do stick around for that, and invite your friends to join you by joining us on Patreon. Thank you!