Lead Safe Mama Baby Bottle Guide

Introduction (for those new to this website):

Tamara Rubin is a multiple Federal award-winning independent advocate for consumer goods safety and a documentary filmmaker. She is also a mother of Lead-poisoned children (her sons were acutely Lead-poisoned in 2005). Since 2009 Tamara has been using XRF testing — 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. For each baby bottle we tested, we also retained a sample bottle in case the manufacturer questions our results. Tamara’s work was featured in Consumer Reports Magazine in February of 2023.

Created: Sunday, April 23, 2023
Last updated: Tuesday — April 26, 2023, 12:15 a.m. PST
This page is only for baby bottles. A separate page will be created soon for other baby-feeding products, including sippy cups and baby food storage.

Two key points (links) related to Lead concerns about Lead-contaminated baby bottles
1.) “Why is this a problem if the Lead is on the OUTSIDE of the bottle?”
2.) “Will this really poison a child?”

Each of the images below is a clickable “button,” which accesses a link that will take you to a specific article, or group of articles, about the bottle(s) in question. Active buttons are indicated with a blue border. If the “button” function is not yet active, that means the article for the particular bottle(s) has not yet been written but is pending — so please check back again soon!

Each of the bottles here has been tested for Lead, Cadmium, Mercury, Arsenic, and Antimony in all components.
Full test results for each bottle are normally noted in detail in each linked article.
If the linked post or article does not include full test results, this is because it is an older article — written before we started doing more-detailed assessments of the products we test and report on.
Please Note: The Lead-contamination concern in baby bottles does not impact ANY modern/ recently manufactured plastic bottles.

If your child has been using any of the bottles noted below as being painted with Lead paint (or otherwise Lead-contaminated), and you have not had a recent Blood Lead Level (BLL) test for your child, we encourage you to ask your pediatrician to order a current BLL test (especially if your child has not been tested within the last six months). You can read more about BLL testing at this link (including questions you might want to ask your doctor before you get your child tested).

Painted glass baby bottles cannot be meaningfully/ reliably tested in any way by consumers — reactive-agent home Lead-test kits simply do not have the level of sensitivity and accuracy required for testing these types of products (which are an important point of your daily life with infants and toddlers in the home). As an independent third party (with no corporate influence or affiliation related to these products), Lead Safe Mama, LLC tests these products for you (and makes the information freely available to the public) as a public service because you cannot test them yourself at home. You can read more about why we do this testing and reporting at this link and you can read more about the unique Lead Safe Mama, LLC business model at this link.

Important Points of Consideration

Glass baby bottles typically stay in circulation/are in use for 5 to 10 years or longer (especially in families with multiple children, and especially with bottles designed and marketed to “grow with your child“).
Because of the above point, we (Lead Safe Mama, LLC) consider baby bottles to be “current” products if they were manufactured and/or sold as new products in the past 10 years.
It is our stand that Lead-contaminated bottles made and sold between 5 and 10 years ago should be subject to the same public, government (CPSC) coordinated recalls, as newly-manufactured Lead-contaminated bottles manufactured in the past 5 years — as many of these older bottles are still in use in homes around the United States (and the world).
Legislation implemented in 2008 mandating the manufacturing of Lead-free children’s products (the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, the “CPSIA”) set limits for Lead content (in both painted coatings and substrates) that became fully-enforceable regulatory limits across all types of children’s products by 2011.
The Lead-limit set for paint and coatings of items intended for use by children is 90 ppm Lead. Any item intended for use by children that tests positive for Lead levels above 90 ppm in the paint or coating is in violation of the CPSIA.
The Lead-limit set for substrates (base materials/components) of items intended for use by children is 100 ppm Lead. Any item intended for use by children with one or more component that tests positive for Lead levels above 100 ppm in the substrate is also a violation of the CPSIA.
Per the guidelines of the 2008 regulations, the CPSC should formally and publicly announce a recall for any and all Lead-contaminated children’s products made after 2011, even if the Lead-contaminated version of that product is “no longer being sold” today (by the manufacturer directly or by third-party sellers).
The companies in question should also be appropriately fined — with relevant criminal penalties per the CPSIA (image below) if it can be clearly demonstrated that the company failed to take immediate appropriate action (including notifying the CPSC of the lack of regulatory compliance, notifying their customer base and issuing a public voluntary recall statement) as soon as they learned their children’s product was in violation of the CPSIA, either painted with high-Lead paint or contaminated with high levels of Lead in the substrate.
Please carefully look at the information on each of the button images and note the date of testing and date of publication in the image-linked articles below, to understand when products were tested and therefore which version of products (manufactured in which years) were found to be either safe or test positive for unsafe levels of Lead.

Duty to Report/Criminal Penalties Language from the CPSC
The image below is linked to the CPSC’s page

Brands you may Want to Avoid:

Baby Bottle (and baby-feeding product) companies we recommend never buying bottles from (primarily for ethical/political considerations), whether or not they happen to still have Lead-contaminated/Lead-painted products on the market today (a recommendation based primarily on the fact that each of the named companies below is producing Lead-contaminated products currently, or has done so in the recent past, AND has refused to issue an immediate and comprehensive recall for one or more of their Lead-contaminated products after being made aware of the concern!):