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)
