Lead-Contaminated Dishes: Vintage & New

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).

If you are here because of our PSA campaign on the NYC Subways, you are probably new here! Please read the article below, but here are some links with additional info, too!

Click either of the images below to read about the Lead levels and concerns for the particular dishes pictured, or continue reading below for a broader discussion on the issue of Lead-glazed dishes (both vintage and new) in use in homes across the United States (and the world) today.

Updated: May 30, 2023 — Tuesday

The concern for Lead and other toxicants in vintage (and new) dishware

Humans have known for centuries that it is unsafe to use Lead in the glazes of functional food-use dishware. Despite this age-old knowledge, Lead has continuously been widely used in the surface glazes of dishware — and incredibly — is somehow even still being used by many manufacturers in the decorative elements of many dishes made today! As an example of newly-manufactured dishes that tested positive for high levels of Lead, here is a link to a recent article about a brand-new dish purchased from Williams Sonoma in 2023.

Section #1) “How much Lead is ‘too much’ Lead?”

In 2008, the United States government passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). While this legislation does not regulate the presence of Lead in ALL dishes, it at least explicitly regulates the presence of Lead in “items intended for use by children.” 

The CPSIA mandates that Lead content in paint or coatings (including on the food surface of dishware) on items intended for use by children, must not exceed 90 parts per million (ppm) Lead. In the two examples of popular dishes (Franciscan Desert Rose and Blue Willow) shown at the top of this page (and featured in the Lead Safe Mama, LLC New York City Subway PSA Campaign), the measured Lead levels often exceed 40,000 ppm. That amounts to more than 444 times the current 90 ppm legal limit for items intended for use by children. Franciscan-brand dishes (Made in the United States or Made in England) more often than not test positive for Lead levels at 100,0000 ppm Lead or higher!

Unfortunately, due to loopholes in U.S. government regulations, most dishes are somehow not considered to be items “intended for use by children” and therefore are not covered by the new (2008) regulatory limits, restricting total Lead content in glazes. In fact, other than this 2008 legislation covering children’s items, there has never been ANY regulatory standard limiting the total Lead content in the glaze of dishware. (!)

FDA regulations that ostensibly address the issue of Lead in dishes (not “made expressly for children“) only consist of a test procedure designed to measure whether any item is actively leaching Lead at the time of manufacture (i.e. when brand-new and unused — with no wear and tear to the surface coating).

Unfortunately, if there is any Lead in the surface coating of a dish, then with regular wear and use the dish has the potential to leach at some point in the future (even if it met regulatory leach-testing standards at the time of manufacture). For this reason alone, the standard approach of leach-testing — while “industry-friendly” (it’s cheaper and more convenient for manufacturers than total content testing, and provides the appearance of addressing the concern) — is obviously woefully-inadequate as a means of protecting consumers from exposure to this incredibly-potent neurotoxicant (especially in the long-term, over the anticipated life of any given set of dishes, which is typically measured in decades).

As a result, families in homes across America are using dishes that have significant and unsafe levels of Lead in the glaze because they assume these dishes are “safe.” While in fact, after decades of regular use — especially daily use, including cleaning, stacking, use with hot or acidic foods (lemon juice, vinegar, coffee, etc.), microwaving, etc. — these once-sparkling-new, freshly-manufactured items, now well-used and worn Lead-glazed dishes (like mugs, teacups, bowls, etc.) are quite possibly now leaching unsafe levels of Lead into food with every use.

Because Lead is such an incredibly potent toxicant (it has been conclusively established that a literally microscopic amount of Lead can poison a child), ANY Lead in the glaze of functional food-use dishes is unacceptable. This is especially true given the well-documented long-term health impacts of persistent (chronic) low-level Lead-poisoning: early onset Alzheimer’s/ memory issues, joint pain/ arthritis, increased risk of heart disease, increased risk of kidney disease, ADHD/ADD, headaches, G.I./digestive issues, fertility complications, etc.

Section #2) “What should I do if I have been using vintage dishes — am I Lead-poisoned for sure?”

Note: modern dishes made in the past 10 years or so should be safe, from a leaching perspective (but depending on the Lead content of the glaze, they may still present a concern in the future).

  1. First: stop using any vintage dishes you may have.
    • Any vintage dishes are likely candidates for being unsafe for use with food after decades of use.
    • “Vintage” is typically understood to mean “20+ years old.”
  2. Look up your dishes to see if they have been tested. 
    • There are over 3,500 articles and pages of information here on this website, most of which are consumer goods test results. If your dishes are not either of the two patterns featured in this PSA campaign, we may have tested and reported on your pattern — and I encourage you to take a moment to use the search bar (which you can find at the top of every page of the site) to look up your dishes, find out if we have tested them, and if so, what their levels are. You can enter the brand (like Wedgwood, Royal Doulton, Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel, or Lenox, for example), pattern (like Rose Chintz, Floral, or Butterfly Meadow), or the country of origin (“Made in England,” or “Made in China,” or “Made in USA“) to help narrow down your search a bit.
  3. Dispose of any high-Lead dishes.
    • If you find your dishes here on the Lead Safe Mama website and learn that they have tested positive for a high level of Lead in the glaze on the food surface, please consider throwing them out (in the trash, and making sure they are broken, so no-one can use them again in the future). While it is frustrating from an environmental perspective, Lead-glazed dishware cannot be safely recycled, and they really cannot be kept safely as decor — as someone in a future generation may choose to use them for food (not realizing they are unsafe). You can read more about that conundrum on this link.
  4. Get a Blood Lead Test.
    • If you (or your children) have been using vintage dishes (dishes that likely have high levels of Lead in the food-surface glaze) for food in your home, and especially if you have been using them on a regular basis, ask your doctor about getting a Blood Lead Level test immediately. Here’s a link with more information about Blood Lead (BLL) Testing.
      • “Getting a current BLL test” is advice for people of all ages, not just “children under 6 years old” (which is a relatively arbitrary cut-off point the CDC historically set for screening for Lead exposure). All women of childbearing age should get tested regardless of whether or not they have a suspected or confirmed source of exposure.
      • If you have not had a BLL test ever or recently, it is also always good to have a baseline BLL test result for yourself (and every member of your family) — especially if you live in an urban area with persistent Lead hazards in the environment, like New York City. 
      • If vintage dishes are your only potential source of exposure (or if you do not use these dishes on a regular basis), a standard BLL test may not come back positive for Lead because the low threshold of detection of many modern tests is too high to detect persistent/chronic low-level exposure from a single source like this.
  5. Talk to your doctor about any health concerns that might be linked to Lead exposure.
  6. Get your dishes tested.
    • If you look your dishes up here on the Lead Safe Mama website (by entering a few keywords in the search bar, checking out our dishes guide, or looking through the categories of articles in the website menu) and you do not find your exact dishes (by searching for the brand, pattern, color, or country of origin) with correlating test results, that does not mean that your particular dishes are safe — just that we have not yet tested them. Please read this article for a bit more information on how to determine if your dishes are safe — using this website.
    • If you would like to send a dish to us for testing and reporting (to support this initiative and because you do not see it with test results here on LeadSafeMama.com), please check out this link.
    • Many local health departments periodically offer free consumer goods testing, so it may be worth calling your health department to ask when the next opportunity for testing will be.
    • Lead Safe Mama, LLC will be holding a free consumer goods testing event in New York City in October of 2023. Subscribe to our newsletter (it’s free!) to make sure you are alerted about the details of the event as soon as that is announced. (Link to subscribe.)
  7. “Bigger picture” considerations:
    • As consumers, we need to ask our government to make the use of Lead on dishes illegal (in all applications and for all intended users — not just babies and young children). Unfortunately, we do not yet have the level of public awareness required to generate the political will to make this happen. Our intention is that this PSA campaign will help to generate a new level of awareness as a first step.
    • We also need to hold companies accountable for their legacy (vintage) products — specifically that (if the manufacturer is still operating today, for example, Lenox or Williams Sonoma) they issue public recalls for their high-Lead-content vintage dishware so it is at least on public record that these specific items are unsafe for use with food (and especially unsafe for children to use). One way to support this initiative is for consumers to write the manufacturers of their Lead-glazed dishware demanding that recalls are initiated on their Lead-painted legacy products. 

Section #3) “But isn’t Lead paint in homes the real problem? Isn’t a concern for Lead in consumer goods misplaced, relatively?”

The short answer is, yes. The big issue is Lead paint in homes. (My own children were acutely poisoned by Lead paint in our historic home in Portland, Oregon — you can watch the documentary film I produced and directed on this link.)

Unfortunately, most people don’t understand how pervasive that problem is and are not in a position to test their homes (or to confront their landlords about testing their homes). Concerns over eviction and homelessness (in response to landlords finding Lead paint in a home) often trump a family’s concern over Lead paint in the home because most young families simply do not understand the significant impacts that Lead can have on our lives (and the long-term costs of those impacts.)

Learning about Lead in consumer goods is easier (less confronting) than learning about Lead in homes, and so we feel this is a good first step to help people learn about the issue.

I often say that the opportunity to learn about toxicity in consumer goods is a “gateway drug” that gets people involved with the issue (my husband hates it when I use that term, but I think it really is a good descriptor — as the issue of Lead in consumer goods is an easy introduction to the larger issue of the legacy of Lead in our built environment — and sets people on a path of awareness and education from which they cannot easily “turn back,” i.e. just forget about and ignore)!

Once parents learn there are neurotoxic contaminants in household items that they own and use every day in their homes, they typically eventually come around to considering that this may, in fact, be a problem that impacts their family (and specifically their children).

In response to this new level of awareness, they begin looking at their home, their children’s schools, and other buildings they spend time in, as possible potential sources of Lead-exposure to their children as well. The normal precipitated response is that they consider getting their children tested for Lead, which is the best possible outcome (increasing the odds that the specific child will potentially be protected from Lead-exposure due to early detection and also increasing the available statistical data for scientific studies of the problem — data which will help in inspiring legislative change to protect future generations of children).

Section #4) What are the Goals of This PSA Campaign?
“Why do a PSA Campaign in the NYC subways?”

I have been reporting about the concern for Lead paint and Leaded glazes used on food-use consumer goods ever since I first became trained and certified in using XRF instrumentation to accurately detect and quantify metallic toxicants (heavy metals) in consumer goods back in 2009.

My Lead-poisoning prevention advocacy work has included crafting legislation to protect children from Lead exposure, and attempts at getting that passed (starting in 2010). Since 2016 — through the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC (officially incorporated in January of 2018) — we have aggressively been pursuing product recalls, using the mechanisms available with the CPSC, and other ways of encouraging corporations to be held accountable for making toxic products. Through all of these efforts (over the past 13+ years) we have learned (relatively definitively) that the legislative process in the United States is “broken” — and early on we decided that swifter and more impactful progress would be made in this issue through greatly-increased public awareness.

This New York City Subway PSA campaign is a new strategy for generating public awareness. Goals include:

  1. Encouraging citizens to get their blood tested for Lead (regardless of age, gender, socio-economic status, or other demographic factors).
  2. Increasing media coverage of the issue of Lead (and other toxicants) in consumer goods and the need for childhood Lead poisoning prevention.
  3. Inspiring legislative change (the creation of new legislation or enforcement of existing legislation) for consumer protection and enforcement — legislation that is not influenced by industry, but is founded on concerns for human health.
  4. Influencing the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the direction of issuing highly publicized recall notices for all Lead-contaminated/ Lead-painted/ Lead-containing children’s feeding products.

To read more about the goals of this PSA campaign in greater detail, click here.

Section #5) In Conclusion… & Thank you, for Taking the Time

Lead paint is not just found on and around our homes. Lead poisoning is not a problem that was “solved” with the 1978 ban on Lead paint, nor is it a problem that will be solved with the current infrastructure plan. To actually solve this problem, we need to start with greater public awareness. Public awareness will, in turn, generate the political will necessary to create a world in which no children are poisoned by Lead, ever. 

Thank you, for taking the time to read this article; please consider copying the link and sharing it on your social media channels (especially in any social media parenting groups you are part of)!

If you are a media reporter (tv, radio, internet, podcasts, etc.) and are interested in writing a story about this issue — please be in touch (link)! The Lead Safe Mama online community consists of more than 100,000 families (100,000 members of our social media community who have been regular readers of this website (LeadSafeMama.com/TamaraRubin.com) in the past 12 months — people who make up a small part of the more than 2.2 million unique visitors to this website around the globe during this same period. Many of them are parents of Lead-poisoned children — and we would be happy to put you in touch with several of these families who are willing to share their personal stories in the service of helping raise awareness of this generally superficially and inaccurately covered issue (when it is covered at all) as we are now in the fourth century of what has been called “the perpetual secret epidemic” of Lead-poisoning on this continent (see 1786 Benjamin Franklin letter here).

For more about the context of this issue (including the politics behind it) please watch the preview screener of the documentary feature film I directed and produced about childhood Lead poisoning: link here.

Tamara Rubin
Mother of acutely Lead poisoned children
Owner — Lead Safe Mama, LLC
Environmental Activist 
Children’s Health Advocate
Documentary Filmmaker

The pieces related to this campaign include:

  1. Lead-painted short baby bottles
  2. Lead-painted tall baby bottles
  3. Dishes with high-Lead glaze
  4. Lead-painted cartoon character (collectible) glassware
  5. Press Inquiries page
  6. Test results for all items pictured in the campaign
  7. Article with in-depth discussion as to why we have decided to undertake this as a PSA Campaign with printed panels in the NYC Subway