Blog Posts

Thanks to everyone for sharing photos of the bottom of their drink bottles! Here are three that stood out, that I’d like to share as examples for what to watch out for. The first is the Sistema which has been tested with XRF and we know has lead. This photo shows dangerous wear in the area of the lead sealing dot, which could potentially expose the lead in there. The second is a Haakaa baby bottle from several years ago that came with different lids to transform from baby bottle to sippy to drink bottle. Except the cover over the sealing dot popped off the first time this bottle fell off the high chair. The third is a bottle a mama bought while in Holland a few years ago. There’s no cover at all on this exposed sealing dot. These three bottles illustrate exactly to watch out for with the sealing dots- a completely naked/exposed dot, a painted dot that’s been worn away to expose the dot, and a cover that’s come off to expose the lead dot. I haven’t tested the 2nd and 3rd bottles so it’s possible that they don’t have lead. But given this being such a common problem it’s very risky and should 100% be assumed leaded for safety’s sake. If we had the 3M leadcheck swabs available we could test these and they would react with the lead if there, but unfortunately the shortage continues so we’ll have to wait to confirm. Hope that helps! Remember if the sealing dot stays covered/painted then it’s not an exposure risk. Just watch for it becoming exposed.

Let’s talk about lead sealing dots- on the bottom of insulated stainless steel drink bottles. Crocodile creek and Sistema bottles have it, but probably so do every other like them. Send me a photo of the bottom of yours! Is it worn? Has a cover come off it? Is there naked lead exposed there?

This is pretty exciting! There’s going to be a whole conference about LEAD, specific to New Zealand info, issues, methods and practices, right here in NZ! In Hamilton, next month! I’ll be speaking there, along with an entire programme of fantastic speakers. If you work in government, health, environmental health, public health, science, the building industry, or just want to geek out with me IRL about all things lead, come on and join us!

Remember our project of citizen science last year where everyone was swabbing their mugs and sending me the photos? Well, this awesomeness is taking things a step further: citizen science with XRF. A concerned grandparent who also uses XRF in their work sent me these XRF results from their grandchild’s mugs. The first mug pictured was one of those submitted last year. So what do we have here… 3 years of paw patrol Easter mugs, and a whole lotta lead (279,000 ppm on last year’s mug and 419,000 ppm on the 2020 mug). I’ve also been sent a photo of an Easter mug with Disney princesses from several years ago that swabbed positive. Let’s review what we found out last year… – NZ standards for lead in ceramics only apply to the inside of the mug – The exterior where your mouth touches has no limits on it – Kids’ products receive no special treatment – A negative swab doesn’t mean there’s not lead present, it just means it’s not being released in high enough amounts for the swab to detect – Repeat cycles through the dishwasher degrade ceramic glaze and can cause lead to be released over time – These mugs would be illegal in North America, possibly in the EU. In summary, this is unconscionable. Kids’ products, especially products that go in our children’s mouths and touch our children’s food, should not have lead in them!

I just read a Lead Safe Mama post about a boy who got lead poisoning from this plate (pictured). Highly recommend reading the story, it’s very touching. But it just makes me so sad because this is exactly the kind of lead poisoning that would never get identified in NZ since we don’t have universal screening of children’s blood. In the US, babies have a little finger prick of blood tested at their 1 year and 2 year doctor visits. The majority of those families have no clue about lead until their baby gets a high result. One thing that’s really useful about such a programme is that there will be pockets of poisonings- like a daycare that uses lead fishing sinkers to hold down a screen outside, or has extremely contaminated soil from the neighbour’s wall, or serves morning tea on dishes like these… or a playground with lead painted equipment and contaminated soil, or a sports ground next to a shooting range, or any number of random unsafe lead exposure events. If we had national blood screening, these pockets of poisonings would be identified, someone would figure out the source and stop more kids being poisoned. But right now, everybody is in the dark. We can test our own homes (if you know to because you follow this page or your friend does and tells you about it) but we can’t follow our kids around 24/7, testing every thing they touch. And even if you did suspect something like the scenarios I mentioned, your GP may tell you that’s not how kids get poisoned and turn you away without testing. There are so many barriers. I envision a national blood lead screening programme in New Zealand, something possibly like this: kids visiting the GP for their 12-15 month and 4 year old immunisations have a little finger prick done, and the samples get sent to their local DHB and then you receive the results in the post a week or two later, with informational pamphlets and follow-up if needed. Kind of like the newborn hearing screening that DHBs offer. It doesn’t seem like it would be very difficult to do, the systems are mostly already in place. But it would mean we could find out if our kids are being poisoned by these invisible and unknown hazards, as well as many people finding out for the first time that their old house could be poisoning their kids (or grandkids). It’s estimated that thousands of NZ children are lead poisoned every year. But we only identify around 10. Wouldn’t a programme like this be amazing? Ah, dreams. Now go and read the article about this rose bowl …

Remember my post about craft paints from a few weeks ago? Ha. This is my daughter at playcentre this morning. (!!) I just wanted to share this to illustrate that while it’s important to learn about all the things that have lead and other toxicants, it’s also important to balance minor exposure risks with other experiences that bring joy, learning and exploration. Would I let this happen every day? No. Was I constantly cringing while also loving her delight and helping to support her play? Yes. Did I clean her up as soon as I could and give her a bath as soon as we got home? Yes! So one-time exposures to things like craft paint, galvanised steel, brass, vintage crockery and tyres (for a child who doesn’t mouth things) are not worth panicking over. The things that should NEVER be discounted are exposures to deteriorating old paint, soil near old houses, leadlight/stained glass windows (and the floors under them), and other things with high lead content like fishing sinkers and bullets. For babies that mouth all the things, this is really a different story entirely. Everything is much riskier. BUT… allowing our kids to be kids in the safest environment we can practically create, while being flexible not to freak out over small infrequent exposures, is so important. We all have different tolerances and a different balance to find. Sometimes we need to let go of trying to make it all perfect and just let our kids ENJOY the slightly toxic experience, even if just for today.

Warning: rant coming. I just read the Politico article in the post I just shared about how Big Oil used their clout to stand in the way of safer fuels so that they could protect their profits and keep leaded aviation fuel as the standard for airplanes with piston engines. Which, by the way, is used in New Zealand too. And every neighbourhood and school within a kilometer of an airport should absolutely be concerned about their children’s lead levels, if anyone was paying attention. This comes on the back of the region where I live being plagued by catastrophic floods, made exponentially worse by forestry slash being washed down rivers en masse which destroyed bridges, and caused our area to be entirely cut off geographically by road as well as complete communication darkness with no internet or phone for 5 days. Our main water pipe was damaged by floods and slash in several places, putting us all at critical use warning for possibly months until the pipe is fixed. This slash washdown happens every time we have heavy rain, which is very frequent lately. It covers the beaches in woody debris and a boy was killed while playing on it last month. Then I just watched an Australian 60 minutes about workers getting a deadly disease from cutting engineered stone, which the manufacturer knew about and didn’t disclose. And I’ve been reading papers about arsenic where they discuss higher rates of lung cancer from builders cutting treated wood, as well as calculations of children’s arsenic exposure from decks and playgrounds in comparison to their likelihood of getting cancer from it. And I’m just struck by this stunning fact: we are all just numbers in calculation sheets where human disease AND environmental destruction are a side effect of corporate greed. Sanctioned by our governments and politicians. Where economic growth and corporate profit trump EVERYTHING, with a certain amount of acceptable contamination and illness being just a part of the deal. Of course I already knew this, but as I experience it again and again, in my vulnerable emotional state from our recent disaster, I’m just completely disgusted all over again. When will we ever stop accepting this?

To follow on recent discussion of face and craft paints, I’d like to share some more of the XRF testing results from my project in December. We tested yellow, red and blue tempera paints that I collected from my home and playcentre. One set was Fivestar brand and the other was Fas. The lead levela were below detection limits but they all had measurable cadmium. The allowable cadmium levels for graphic materials like these are 75 ppm so these are within allowable limits. But those levels are based on the assumption they are used as intended (kids older than 3, used as paints with limited risk of ingestion). The EU level for cadmium in infant cereal foods is 0.04 ppm. So the level that’s considered a risk for FOOD is MUCH lower than what’s considered a risk for PAINTS. However,in the EU, the allowable cadmium in liquid toys like this is only 0.3 ppm not 75 ppm. So these paints might be illegal in the EU. Also let me discuss the limitations of these results. XRF isn’t super accurate at these low levels. Single digit ppm is the lowest it can detect so the error in measurement at this level will be proportionately higher than at a higher level. Hence the reason I included the error bars, which are bigger than the results in some cases. So for this reason the trends are probably more important than the actual result. So my take on the trends in these results is… 1) The Fivestar paints are consistently higher than the Fas paints 2) The yellow paints are consistently higher than the other colours 3) It’s a relief that the levels of both lead and cadmium aren’t much higher but they are still a potential risk The take home message from these results are that: – When used as directed, these levels of cadmium are not a risk. – Babies swallowing these paints on a regular basis will likely be getting more than the recommended cadmium exposure – NZ needs to update our toy and graphic materials standards (and ceramics too) to be more protective from all the heavy metals, as illustrated by the EU updates of the last decade that we haven’t kept up with. So, like I said in my last post, don’t let babies suck on sloppy paintbrushes. There’s stuff in there that’s not good for them. (Cadmium causes cancer- kidney, lung and other cancers- from cumulative lifetime exposure, not a single one-time exposure)

To follow on the Consumer NZ research on face paints… let’s talk about art products like face paints, finger paints and craft paints. Long story short… Don’t ever use these in ways other than they were intended, and don’t assume they are “safe”. Don’t use markers or tempera paint as face or body paint. Be wary of acrylic paints for kids. And for the love of God, please don’t let your baby stick brushes full of paint in their mouths. Firstly, if you read my previous post about the Consumer NZ face paint investigations you’ll know that there are a LOT of toxic things that are banned from face paints but can still show up in them. But note there’s a good reason for the ban. Many chemicals can cause allergic and other skin reactions and health issues so are not safe to be in contact with skin for very long. So let’s take that a step further to realise that *craft* materials like tempera paints and markers do not even have those regulations because they are not intended for use on skin. So don’t use them like face/body paints. Next, let’s talk about craft paints. As per usual, New Zealand isn’t in line with the best heavy metal limits for kids products. Our face paints don’t have any defined limits for toxicants at all (unlike even Australia) . Our tempera/poster paints only have the same limits as those for toys (which a recent ESR report showed was inadequate for painted toys so you can imagine how awful it is for a liquid paint). While our allowable lead for kids paints limits mostly match the US limits (90ppm for lead), they are farrrrr higher than the EU limits (0.5 ppm lead! 180x less than ours). And even Australia has a 25 ppm limit for finger and face paints that we don’t have. That “Age 3+” label is there for a reason: don’t let the littlies ingest them. So lastly, we have the acrylic paints and some pastels. Lead isn’t normally a big an issue with these (for standard brands at least), but these can be high in cadmium, a potent carcinogen linked to kidney, lung and other cancers as well as other heavy metals. That “cadmium yellow” on the table at your kids’ summer craft programme? (yes this happened to me) actually contains cadmium. But somehow it can still be labeled “nontoxic” and non-hazardous! So unsuspecting schools will stock them. It’s important for people of ALL ages to know these are not safe to get on your skin or in your mouth. They are not safe for unsupervised or careless use by kids and should NOT be used by preschoolers at all. Miscellaneous notes paragraph: Face paints and pastels have not uncommonly been found to contain asbestos too so there’s another reason for taking care to use reputable brands and use as directed. Additionally, all paints can have things like formaldehyde, ammonia and solvents. And it’s worth noting that vintage art paints can be very high in lead. “Flake white” is 50% lead. Even the paint tubes themselves used to be made of lead. And kids have been poisoned by deteriorating lead paint from artist’s wall paintings. So have a look in your playcentre or kindy arts cabinet for any “cadmium yellow” or “cadmium red” paints. And next time you see a baby mouthing a paint brush covered in tempera paint it’s probably a good idea to replace it with a safer toy instead. Now you know.

Some good news! Consumer recently tested a set of face paints and none of them had high lead levels. This is a big improvement from the same test they did in 2014 where one product was extremely high in lead, and others had issues too. I hope this means progress. But maybe the one high-lead product currently on the market just wasn’t picked for testing this time. And although these results are okay now… I know it’s common for manufacturers to make mistakes and raw ingredient swaps can introduce problems so ongoing vigilance is important. But for now, things are looking okay! I have more to say on this subject though, I’ll post more soon! 2022 Consumer test:https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/what-s-in-face-paint 2014 Consumer test:https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/face-paints