Toothpaste widely contaminated with lead and other metals, US research finds
Toothpaste widely contaminated with lead and other metals, US research finds
Most of 51 brands tested, including those for children, contained dangerous heavy metal
I can't tell from the article if there's a real problem. None of the levels exceed FDA thresholds, and it sounds bad, but there's also no definite claim of harm.
The highest levels detected violated the state of Washington’s limits
https://tamararubin.com/about/
Tamara Rubin is an internationally recognized, multiple federal award-winning Lead-poisoning prevention advocate, documentary filmmaker, and mother of four sons (ages 26, 20, 17, and 14). She took on the cause of childhood Lead poisoning and consumer goods safety advocacy after her sons were acutely Lead poisoned by the work of a painting contractor in 2005. Tamara lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two youngest sons (who each have permanent disabilities from Lead exposure as infants).
She does this work specifically because it can cause permanent harm. Her family literally are victims of it.
Also, as the article notes, Washington State has much stricter standards than the Federal government.
More on Rubin:
If her youngest sons with permanent lead exposure injuries were 14 and 17 in 2023, and the lead exposure event took place in 2005, when her older children were young, some of the math isn't mathing for me.
When it comes to lead, there is no "safe" level of lead in ones body. I think the reason the FDA has a limit is because we know it's everywhere, so having a standard limit lower than where the average person may begin to see noticeable side-effects is important. Although, as everyone's body chemistry varies, what is "safe/tolerable" for one individual may not be for another.
Lead is also one of those things that from research I have read affects children to the greatest degree while their little brains are growing. In children it can cause things like aggression, learning disabilities, and slow growth and development amongst other things.
Also this is only one source of lead children (or any of us) may be absorbing, which would make you wonder about a compounding affect when looked at in aggregate. We know it's in a LOT of chocolate, spices (cinnamon being the current one doing kids in), toys, and environmental things like paint in places like old homes and schools (read a story not long ago about a kid they figured out was being poisoned from lead paint dust on a windowsill at school).
The max thresholds don't mean it's fine if it's lower, just that at some point it becomes difficult to both detect the presence of things and there's a limit on how much can be prevented. If we were progressing in time correctly we should be lowering these maximum levels both in the ability of detection and in the beginning sources. Especially in cases like this where either the metals are being added or are part of specific ingredients that would cost more to process and remove the metals.
And wow, they said Washington State was lower than the FDA, but that's a magnitude less! Good job, Washington!
The article told you. There is NO safe level of lead. The legal limits are not appropriate for health.
Low level mass lead poisoning makes the world make a lot more sense now.
Per the FDA, there is no known safe amount of lead exposure. If it’s in something you want to minimize your exposure to it.
Don't worry, we'll just cut the FDA funding and stop testing.. problem goes away just like that
Just like COVID testing in 2020!
I don't dispute her lead findings, but her statement about Hydroxyapatite shows she's willing to give comment on things she knows nothing about.
Hydroxyapatite is extracted from cow bone and added because it allegedly helps teeth absorb calcium, though Rubin said she doubts it does.
Hydroxyapatite is used as an alternative to flouride, as it's able to attach to the enamal and act as a barrier similar to how flouride does.
Research has shown it's less effective than flouride overall (it can't withstand as low a pH/acidity before dissolving), but it's not added to increase calcium absorption, like she claims.
Tamara Rubin is a grifter with no expertise who bought an XRF gun to use to scan random objects as fodder for her blog where she gets money from affiliate links. Her wikipedia page talks about a few of her financial crimes. I wouldn't worry anything she puts out.
Holy cow you weren't kidding, she has been convicted of tons of crimes. Immediately discredited her findings for me
Hydroxyapatite is basically bone without the last calcium ion, which is calcium apatite
Hydroxyapatite is present in bones and teeth; bone is made primarily of HA crystals interspersed in a collagen matrix—65 to 70% of the mass of bone is HA. Similarly HA is 70 to 80% of the mass of dentin and enamel in teeth.
I think you may want to reconsider, it might not be used for calcium absorbtion (that's via preferential binding and transport pathways in the gut lumen), the apatite is absorbed by the collagen matrix for the outer coating, effectively regenerating the tooth.
Flouride is a stronger, but worse version of this (strengthing apatite without the Ca++ ion), though both together could theoretically be optimal, I don't know of any studies looking into this, and we should be wary of making such claims barring evidence.
I'm not suggesting hydroxyapetite is without merit for dental purposes, it absolutely is useful, and I agree combining it with flouride would likely be optimal (I recall reading a study that seemed to suggest HA can actually remineralize deeper into the tooth than flouride can).
I was just pointing out that the woman in the article didn't seem to know what hydroxyapetite is actually used for, despite trying to seem like a source of knowledge.
Wait....US is still doing research?!
I mean, it depends what you're willing to call "research".
The testing, conducted by Lead Safe Mama, also found concerning levels of highly toxic arsenic, mercury and cadmium in many brands.
I'm not sure I would put this on the same level as a controlled, reproducible double-blind peer-reviewed study by Harvard and MIT published in a prestigious journal, but I'm sure it's really close. /s
Edit: Ok, so people argue she's at least a little legitimate, but why the fuck can't we use actual scientific institutions anymore? We have a scientific method for a reason. Where's the peer review? Where's the people reproducing her results?
How else can the US learn how to inflict the maximum amount of pain on people it doesn't like?
They keep losing their stuff and brain due to lead poisoning, so they have to keep re-searching.
So I'm all for substances to be routinely measured for lead concentration. I wouldn't be surprised if lead and fascism have a link.
But, because of leaded gasoline and widespread use of lead in other products historically we cannot escape 0 lead.
I wouldn't be surprised if you took a plate of food from a randomized selection of restaurants, you would find lead in every meal.
Lead is dense, and leaded gasoline absolutely fucked our planet. We know the safe level is 0.
We cannot say that any measurement of non-zero is worse than what we can ultimately control for. We need to be measuring these things over decades, to verify the amount continues to decrease with the ultimate hope of 0 (though, that's unlikely).
It's no surprise, they find lead in there. Our analytics have become crazy sensitive, we can detect the tiniest amounts of chemicals nowadays.
That's why it's very important to check articles like this one for what actually was found in order to avoid uninformed sensationalizing.
Reading through this article makes you wonder how Washington came up with their regulation for lead levels and why it differs so much from the FDA's standards.
Even if we know, that no amount of lead can be considered 'safe', we have to have a regulation, of what is allowed and what we deem acceptable. Routinely testing products against these standards of course has to happen, otherwise, they'd be pretty useless.
For me, the crazy takeaway of the article was just how high the acceptable level of lead is for toothpaste (the current FDA limit is 20,000ppb for fluoridated toothpaste).
The findings have not been peer-reviewed and the author has been convicted of…a lot of crime.
Peer review is for scientific papers, not lab results. If you have reason to question the lab that produced the results, then please share it.
There are many different ways to collect the sample that was sent to the lab…
We can fix this! Quick, destroy the FDA so the problem will never be seen again!
They had to stop putting lead into fuel years, and now even lead water pipes are under threat, so they need another way to lower peoples IQs to keep them mallable.
back in my day they even leaded the wine!
that's where the phrase, "get the lead out", became so popular.
invite some friends over for dinner, break out the wine and one of the servants would say, "this wine is vinegar!" and then you'd whip them and scream, "get the lead out!"
Back when I hunted mammoth, lead was not a concern.
mallablemalleableThanks. But I definitely remember having read "mallable" before. Could that be a British vs. American thing?
Don't worry. Chronic underfunding of education coupled with social media means we can save money on expensive lead!
So that's why there is a warning on the label about swallowing toothpaste.
I think in 100 years our ancestors will find it barbaric that we scrapped our teeth with metal tools and used abrasives to keep them clean instead of having bioengineered bacteria just keep our mouths clean.
We tend to find older practices barbaric because they were unscientific and didn't work, not because they became obsolete due to better technology. Like, lobotomies and shock therapy are barbaric and that has nothing to do with our technology being better. They were just stupid scams.
Please stop pushing this person’s blog. Her claims have not been independently verified. It’s shameful that the guardian has amplified this nonsense without scientific proof.
scientific proof like sending the toothpastes to a lab to independently verify leadsafemama's results?
So long story short what adult toothpastes and children's toothpastes are ok to use
Rubin said the contamination seems to lie in some ingredients added to toothpaste, including hydroxyapatite, calcium carbonate and bentonite clay.
Several children’s toothpastes, like Dr Brown’s Baby Toothpaste, did not test positive for any metals and did not contain the ingredients in question.
I’m 40% lead and other metals! *klongk klongk*
Send directives to retract the word lead from all communications, done
At the moment if it comes from the US I'm not buying it. 😏
I pay eight dollars for what I assumed was "fancy toothpaste". It's expensive. Good teeth, too bad about the fucking lead poisoning though...
Wtf!
Seems to be a lot of kids toothpaste on that list
Probably because the bulk of the products tested were likely kids toothpastes.
Lead Safe Mama community members nominate products for laboratory testing and then the LSM community uses crowd-funding (including through GoFundMe) to raise the funds to cover the costs related to testing and reporting of these nominated products. This is how the toothpaste and tooth powder products listed in the chart below were chosen for testing, and how the testing and reporting was paid for.
yeah, kids toothpaste is especially worrisome if it contains toxins because kids can't exactly spit out their toothpaste until they get to a certain age. they just consume it, so kids toothpaste is supposed to be safe to consume.
Ah, I see. Appreciate the clarification
it seems alot of themse are kids toothpaste, and SLS-free ones. they might be less regulated, because different companies may produce it, and alot of them base the manufactering in china. i also notice some of them sls-free can cause allergic reactions too.
What the actual fuck. “Oh it’s fine. Just a little arsenic and mercury.”
It’s nonsense from a blogger who claims they know how to test for lead. I wouldn’t worry about it too much unless an independent lab confirms her findings. So far that hasn’t happened.
Supposedly lab tested. 🤷♂️
it... it has, did you glance at the article or just vibing with the other commentators here that hadn't heard of leadsafemama and yet are all experts on the topic?