Making our personal environment safe is the ultimate goal of ESSCO - Safety Check. Over the past two-years Environmental Services & Solutions Corporation (ESSCO) has preformed thousands of tests on consumer products for families and businesses using X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) Analyzers, specifically looking for heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury. While providing these testing services to moms and dads, toy stores, manufacturers, importers and industries, we collected data. Our data includes what type of product it is, if the product is new or used, what surface coating or substrate is present, and how the product is utilized. Now we want to share this data to help inform the public of what is in their personal environment.
We know that consumer products contain a wide variety of heavy metals. This is what we basically found on 8000 tests of consumer products:
1. Total lead content over 300 parts per million (PPM) which is the current federal regulation for children’s products, in 6.81% of all tests.
2. Cadmium content over 40 PPM (a level that was part of the Washington State Children’s Safe Products Act) was found in 3.64% of all tests.
3. In general, used products versus new products were found to contain higher quantities of lead (10.15% v. 4.42%) and children’s products were found to have below average levels of total lead content (4.05% over 300 PPM).
4. However 16.27% of mouthable products (products that children put in their mouths) were found to contain lead in excess of 300 PPM.
5. Of all defined substrates: Ceramics were found to contain lead and cadmium most often. 31.02% of tests on ceramics were found with lead in excess of 300 PPM and 12.03% with cadmium above 40 PPM.
It appears that the products we cook with, eat off of, drink out of and wear have more metals than the average toy. Although toys have a more direct relationship to children, children can still be exposed to potentially harmful metals in everyday consumer products found around the home, especially in the kitchen.
Knowledge is the key, know what is in your environment and mitigate potential harm.
Note: Contact ESSCO for actual data.
