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Lead exposure from routine consumption of coffee and tea from ceramic mugs

181 points by spekcular 5y ago

cbfrench 5y ago
This is why I’m a big fan of Fiestaware. It has a sort of fun retro vibe, but it also specifies that it’s “lead free” on it. (At least the stuff I’ve had for the last decade does. But I think it’s been lead free for most, if not all, of its history.)
- acidburnNSA 5y ago
  Yeah and the slightly radioactive antique orange color helps sterilize the contents.
politician 5y ago
Well, this ruined my morning cup of coffee.
- spekcular 5y ago
  It shouldn't. All mugs sold commercially should satisfy FDA guidelines for lead in the glaze. Note that only one mug here produced coffee that was over the FDA limit for lead in bottled water (and still below the tap water threshold). Now, the foreign mugs, or vintage mugs, or handcrafted mugs you buy at a local market from a local artisan who may or may not be using lead-free glaze? There you have to be careful. NYC had severe lead poisoning cases from this just a few months ago: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/574547-lead-poisoning-cases-tied-to-traditional-ceramic-ware-health-officials-warn https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/574547-lead-poisoning-....
  - acdha 5y ago
    The main thing makes me curious about is how many companies cut corners. The fact that only one mug was significant seems like poor quality control by a single manufacturer, which probably says we need more random sample monitoring.
  - Tempest1981 5y ago
    > should satisfy FDA guidelines Many of my mugs are from gift shops. I wonder if they are FDA approved?
    - spekcular 5y ago
      Unless it says "Not food safe" on the bottom, you're probably good. If you can find a manufacturer mark and Google it, that might be the best way to check. USA made is very likely safe.
      - Tempest1981 5y ago
        Almost all say "Made in China". A couple have a "THAILAND". One "ENGLAND"! Only a few have a manufacturer name.
blakesterz 5y ago
I've always wondered about that, I have a few mugs I use daily and they have tiny little cracks inside. The results say coffee seems to have more lead than tea, and some of the levels were above guidelines. The lead concentrations were dependent on the cup used. But blood lead levels did not increase above regulatory or guidance values.
knappa 5y ago
Beware the Green Decorative mug!
- karaterobot 5y ago
  I have a green mug, but it is not very decorative, please advise.
londons_explore 5y ago
For the vast majority of ceramic homeware, your beverage never comes into contact with the ceramic material - the shiny 'gloss' surface is a glaze material. It's that which often contains lead. It's particularly common on 'artisan' home-made ceramics, due to the ease of working with lead glazes. Wikipedia even has a section on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_glaze#Lead(II)_oxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_glaze#Lead(II)_oxide
DoctorNick 5y ago
Well, crap. How do you tell which ceramics use lead-based paint/glaze and which don't?
- spekcular 5y ago
  Almost all do. Most don't leach, or leach amounts too small to pose a significant danger. For more info, check out this blog [0]. The design is a little much, but it's quite informative. The author is a mother whose kids got lead poisoning, so she bought a XRF spectral analyzer and now posts lead test results for tons of items. I've found it a useful resource. [0] https://tamararubin.com/2019/12/which-ceramic-coffee-mugs-are-lead-free/ https://tamararubin.com/2019/12/which-ceramic-coffee-mugs-ar...
  - jdnier 5y ago
    Really interesting. From the article: "Total Lead content in the glaze or coating of modern mugs (as detectable with an XRF) is not regulated. As long as mugs are not leaching Lead at the time of manufacture (when they are brand-new), they are considered to be safe to use — even if the Lead content of the glaze is very high. However, for context, the amount of Lead considered unsafe (and illegal) in the paint, glaze or coating of a newly-manufactured item manufactured and sold as “intended for use by children” is 90 ppm or higher. The good news is that, since children’s items are regulated for total Lead content (as of 2008), newly-purchased children’s mugs legally must have coatings below 90 ppm Lead [and my findings have confirmed that manufacturers are generally complying with this law — although I recommend sticking with children’s items manufactured in 2011 or later, as it took a while for the companies (and their supply chains) to get up to speed in their compliance with the new regulations]."
  - ezekiel68 5y ago
    FWIW, every "recommended" mug in her current list is a glass mug, not a ceramic glaze mug. Which is no problem for me but this doesn't answer the original question. As a matter of fact, I ordered a new glass mug set from Amazon using a link in her article (which I assume is an affiliate link) out of gratitude for her work.
harles 5y ago
Does anyone know the credibility of this site or the journal this article is in? The subtitle is odd enough to make me question the legitimacy “comparison to California Safe Harbor Levels”.
- spekcular 5y ago
  It's run by a reputable publisher (Springer) and the editorial board consists of scientists at major universities: https://foodcontaminationjournal.biomedcentral.com/about/editorial-board https://foodcontaminationjournal.biomedcentral.com/about/edi....
  - timr 5y ago
    It's not a great journal. Per the metrics: 0.882 - Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 0.37 - SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 4 - Cite Score This is a place where niche papers get published. Springer runs tons of crap journals. (for reference, SJR scores for all journals: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php)
    - spekcular 5y ago
      Low citation count does not imply it's an untrustworthy journal. Sometimes niche knowledge is useful – as in the present case of food contamination studies!
      - timr 5y ago
        No, but it implies they have a low bar for acceptance. You can't take impact factor of the journal as the sole indicator of quality for a particular paper (even NEJM publishes garbage), but it should strongly influence your prior. Especially for general-interest studies like this, if the results were impactful and well done they'd be published in a better journal. Assuming that this is done well (I have no idea), the fact that it's in a super-niche journal means that it's likely not surprising/interesting to anyone in the field.
ldoughty 5y ago
My wife does pottery, and makes her own glazes. This is a major concern for potters, and you usually won't see a professional or semi-professional potter use lead in their glazes... Of course, if you're buying on Amazon, who knows.. but you are very, very unlikely to have this problem with people who make pottery for a living (like local artists, or reputable Etsy shops)..
- stiray 5y ago
  This is exactly what my wife said (also doing the pottery). Lead glazes are never used unless you use it for some "special effects" or you are playing it cheap.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    > or you are playing it cheap Shouldn't we assume all this mass-produced pottery found on the shelves of Walmart and Bed Bath & Beyond is being made as cheaply as possible? I don't know about you, but the only time I see non-MADE IN CHINA pottery these days is used, at the thrift store. New stuff isn't generally coming from some domestic artisan who cares about poisoning their neighbors more than a bigger profit.
- krisoft 5y ago
  > but you are very, very unlikely to have this problem with people who make pottery for a living Amazon clearly doesn't use a mater compiler either. They buy their mugs from people who make pottery for a living. Perhaps the distinction is different? Maybe people who make pottery for a living in the developed world? Or perhaps people who make pottery for a living at smaller scales?
  - CuriousCosmic 5y ago
    There's a bit of a distinction between people who make pottery for a living and people who run factories that churn out pottery. When the focus is mass production it stops being a craftsman's job and rather becomes a calculated process designed to extract as much profit as possible with little regard for anything else.
Yizahi 5y ago
If the tea and coffee comes with lead poisoning, well, screw it, I'll take it :)
tvb12 5y ago
It specifies that the source of the lead is the paint or glaze. I didn't think lead paint was still a thing, but some quick googling is making me a little nervous... It seems quite a few modern mugs contain some amount of lead.
- spekcular 5y ago
  Note it's not just lead, but also cadmium for bright colors. Trendy cookware manufacturer Le Creuset uses cadmium in many of their hues, for example. Many other enameled and ceramic cookware manufacturers do too. Some test results: https://tamararubin.com/2019/02/made-in-france-c-2013-yellow-le-creuset-enameled-sauce-pan-15800-ppm-cadmium-a-known-carcinogen/ https://tamararubin.com/2019/02/made-in-france-c-2013-yellow....
  - Auracle 5y ago
    That’s incredibly frustrating. You shouldn’t need to worry about things like that from a high end manufacturer.
    - spekcular 5y ago
      It's unclear to me whether one should worry, assuming the glaze is intact. The cookware passes California prop 65 standards (extremely stringent). The coloration with the high cadmium levels is not on a surface that contacts food, and even if it was, I don't know that it would leach. But we have no way of knowing without expensive testing! However, even if we ignore the possibility of harm to the end user, I think the author of that blog makes a great point: "By using high levels of Cadmium in manufacturing, Le Creuset has – apparently for decades – been causal in contributing to “the demand for” the mining, refining and manufacturing of a toxic pigment that can (and does) poison others (workers, communities, waterways, the planet) through various processes/at multiple points throughout their manufactured products’ life cycles."
  - amelius 5y ago
    Did they test how much of it actually ends up in cooked food? Also, those numbers don't tell me much, I want to know how this compares to lethal/toxic dose etc.
xyst 5y ago
I switched to stainless steel a long time ago. Only use ceramics as decoration or to hold fruit
- laumars 5y ago
  Stainless steal has lead in too. Is there any research that compares stainless steal to ceramics? Edit: ignore me. I’m confusing lead with iron. That’ll teach me posting while drinking.
  - loeg 5y ago
    Lead is not used to make stainless steel.
5tefan 5y ago
Well. Gotta die from something anyway. Cannot avoid all that's around us nowadays or I'll die trying within a week from now. Seems to be the deal in our modern world. Also good to read the comments from real pottery artists to put it into perspective.
Aerroon 5y ago
Whenever I see studies/articles like this I wonder what is the safest material to eat from and store food in? My thinking always defaulted to glass. If it has been good enough for chemistry for hundreds of years perhaps it's good enough for food. But some glass also contains lead.
- gruez 5y ago
  stainless steel?
  - evv555 5y ago
    Most metal food containers are coated with plastics like BPA. You can't trust "BPA free" labels because there are now analog compounds in use. For example this is what a dissolved coke can looks like.[1] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQHFQoFoxvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQHFQoFoxvQ
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Most metal food containers are coated with plastics like BPA I doubt it. I put my stainless steel containers in the oven with no ill effects, so there probably isn't some plastic coating on them. Are you confusing disposable metal food containers (eg. aluminum cans) with stainless steel bowls/cups?
      - evv555 5y ago
        Specifically I had something like this in mind.[1] Granted that article is about reusable aluminum bottles but stainless steel can have its own coatings like teflon. It's not unreasonable to believe your stainless steel bowls are a safe choice but it takes a surprising amount of effort to verify if that's the case given precedents like these. 1. https://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20110712/some-aluminum-water-bottles-leach-bpa#1 https://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20110712/some-aluminum-water...
        5y ago
hprotagonist 5y ago
Cannabis consumers have know for a long time that colored glass pipes and bongs and the like are also suspicious, particularly if you don’t know the maker and their process, for the same reasons. Clear glass might look boring, but it’s a lot safer!
- canadaduane 5y ago
  Boring borosilicate glass is the best. Strong, heat resistant, and very safe.
  - xaduha 5y ago
    There's a lot of soda-lime glass too though. Maybe not that crucial, but they don't seem to indicate on the surface what it is made of like they do with plastics.
X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
Blood lead levels did not increase above regulatory or guidance values.
- civilized 5y ago
  All blood lead is bad and levels well below guidance have measurable cognitive effects in children. So this is worth knowing about.
  - X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
    > All blood lead is bad and levels well below guidance have measurable cognitive effects in children. Oh that's good to know, do you have a source?
jaclaz 5y ago
TLDR: > Overall, the potential for lead ingestion from contaminated ceramic mugs is minimal when compared to other sources, such as food. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) reported that the average daily intake of lead from food sources in the general population is approximately 56.5 μg/day (ATSDR 2007a). In comparison, the maximum daily lead intake from drinking 3.3 eight-ounce cups of coffee based on the data collected in our study resulted in a dose of 6.71 μg, over eight times less than the average daily lead intake from food. Nonetheless, exposure to lead should be minimized to the extent possible.
reducesuffering 5y ago
Just wait until you start testing all the brass-looking metal material in your home from before the 80s… Lamps, door handles, stained glass, it’s endless
ajhurliman 5y ago
The title appears neutral, but I can't help but think "I've definitely been unwittingly poisoning myself" when I read it. But then in the findings it basically says it's a complete non-issue. I wish they would have included the findings in the title, it feels like click-bait.
- eganist 5y ago
  > The title appears neutral, but I can't help but think "I've definitely been unwittingly poisoning myself" Probably because this abridged title isn't neutral (flagged accordingly). By simply stating "Lead exposure from [x]," the implication is that impactful exposure risk exists. The original title and even the condensed title (everything after the colon scrubbed) were both at least 18 characters too long, but a better abridgement of the title would've been "A pilot study to assess lead exposure from routine consumption from ceramic mugs" scrubbing the coffee/tea reference as the subject happens to be the mugs themselves
  - smarx007 5y ago
    "An assessment of lead exposure from routine consumption of coffee and tea from ceramic mugs" should have been fine too.
    - eganist 5y ago
      True
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- smarx007 5y ago
  There is an abstract in every academic paper and this paper had this bit in the abstract: "The estimated daily dose of lead exceeded the California Maximum Allowable Dose Level of 0.5 μg per day for one of the five mugs tested. Blood lead levels did not increase above regulatory or guidance values.". As others have written, "Blood lead levels did not increase" does not mean there is no long-term health problem, it was simply outside the scope of the publication. Academic paper titles are almost always describe what the paper is about, not what the conclusion is. Academics don't do frontloading, thankfully. Edit: to look into the title further, you can see that it starts with "A _pilot_ study". This can indicate that the sample size of 5 mugs was not a mistake and the main purpose of the paper is to get feedback on the methodology and a larger follow-up study may be underway and we shouldn't be deriving any (health-related) conclusions from this paper.
clavicat 5y ago
So that’s why I’m retarded.
politelemon 5y ago
For UK readers, here is the regulation around amount of lead and cadmium in ceramics that are in contact with food. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2006/1179/made https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2006/1179/made I'm not 100% sure of the maximum safe lead per day, though I did find this https://www.hse.gov.uk/lead/health-effects.htm https://www.hse.gov.uk/lead/health-effects.htm > The occupational exposure limit for lead in air set out in the Regulations is 0.15 mg/m3, and blood lead suspension levels for males and females are 60 and 30ug/dl, respectively. For young workers (under 18) the blood lead suspension limit is 50 μg/dl. But someone with better dotUKfu may provide a better source!
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  There's no "safe" level for lead exposure. The levels are for when various types of action are required.
  - ezekiel68 5y ago
    That's a good sound bite, but -- if taken literally -- we have sadly evolved upon the wrong planet. Yes, we should minimize lead exposure but there is no actionable way for even 30% of the Earth's population to live at blood lead levels lower than 5 ug/dl.
ineedasername 5y ago
>The five mugs chosen for this study were selected because they were found to contain lead in a screening-level assessment. Specifically, 24 mugs from the authors’ office were tested This is an interesting (and maybe not too rigorous) method of selecting research samples, and points towards the need for another study: How representative was this 5:24 ratio of lead bearing mugs? Greater or less than what you would find in the broader mug population? It's also fun to imagine how the researchers came about this: --Was it boredom? ("Hey Shannon, I'm in between projects, how about we go see if there's anything in the kitchen area that could be dangerous?") --Maybe serendipitous? ("Shannon, I just read an excellent novel that happened to mention the role that lead plays in ceramics an enamel finishes. Let's have go at the office mug collection and see what we find!") --Brute force? ("Lead seems to get into everything these days... let's test every single thing in the office.")
fredophile 5y ago
I briefly looked at the article but don't see anything actionable from what it said. I could buy lead testing kits and check out all of my mugs at home. It looks like that would cost around $40 a test which seems a bit high for checking every mug I own given the low risk indicated in the link.
Dowwie 5y ago
"Overall, the potential for lead ingestion from contaminated ceramic mugs is minimal when compared to other sources, such as food. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) reported that the average daily intake of lead from food sources in the general population is approximately 56.5 μg/day (ATSDR 2007a). In comparison, the maximum daily lead intake from drinking 3.3 eight-ounce cups of coffee based on the data collected in our study resulted in a dose of 6.71 μg, over eight times less than the average daily lead intake from food. Nonetheless, exposure to lead should be minimized to the extent possible"
ezekiel68 5y ago
Blood lead levels did not increase above regulatory or guidance values. And this was after screening for the mugs with the highest concentrations of lead in their ceramic glaze. I think we're done here.

181 points by spekcular 5y ago

This is why I’m a big fan of Fiestaware. It has a sort of fun retro vibe, but it also specifies that it’s “lead free” on it. (At least the stuff I’ve had for the last decade does. But I think it’s been lead free for most, if not all, of its history.)

acidburnNSA 5y ago
Yeah and the slightly radioactive antique orange color helps sterilize the contents.

politician 5y ago

Well, this ruined my morning cup of coffee.

spekcular 5y ago
It shouldn't. All mugs sold commercially should satisfy FDA guidelines for lead in the glaze. Note that only one mug here produced coffee that was over the FDA limit for lead in bottled water (and still below the tap water threshold). Now, the foreign mugs, or vintage mugs, or handcrafted mugs you buy at a local market from a local artisan who may or may not be using lead-free glaze? There you have to be careful. NYC had severe lead poisoning cases from this just a few months ago: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/574547-lead-poisoning-cases-tied-to-traditional-ceramic-ware-health-officials-warn https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/574547-lead-poisoning-....
- acdha 5y ago
  The main thing makes me curious about is how many companies cut corners. The fact that only one mug was significant seems like poor quality control by a single manufacturer, which probably says we need more random sample monitoring.
- Tempest1981 5y ago
  > should satisfy FDA guidelines Many of my mugs are from gift shops. I wonder if they are FDA approved?
  - spekcular 5y ago
    Unless it says "Not food safe" on the bottom, you're probably good. If you can find a manufacturer mark and Google it, that might be the best way to check. USA made is very likely safe.
    - Tempest1981 5y ago
      Almost all say "Made in China". A couple have a "THAILAND". One "ENGLAND"! Only a few have a manufacturer name.

blakesterz 5y ago

I've always wondered about that, I have a few mugs I use daily and they have tiny little cracks inside. The results say coffee seems to have more lead than tea, and some of the levels were above guidelines. The lead concentrations were dependent on the cup used. But blood lead levels did not increase above regulatory or guidance values.

knappa 5y ago

Beware the Green Decorative mug!

karaterobot 5y ago
I have a green mug, but it is not very decorative, please advise.

londons_explore 5y ago

For the vast majority of ceramic homeware, your beverage never comes into contact with the ceramic material - the shiny 'gloss' surface is a glaze material. It's that which often contains lead. It's particularly common on 'artisan' home-made ceramics, due to the ease of working with lead glazes. Wikipedia even has a section on the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_glaze#Lead(II)_oxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_glaze#Lead(II)_oxide

DoctorNick 5y ago

Well, crap. How do you tell which ceramics use lead-based paint/glaze and which don't?

spekcular 5y ago
Almost all do. Most don't leach, or leach amounts too small to pose a significant danger. For more info, check out this blog [0]. The design is a little much, but it's quite informative. The author is a mother whose kids got lead poisoning, so she bought a XRF spectral analyzer and now posts lead test results for tons of items. I've found it a useful resource. [0] https://tamararubin.com/2019/12/which-ceramic-coffee-mugs-are-lead-free/ https://tamararubin.com/2019/12/which-ceramic-coffee-mugs-ar...
- jdnier 5y ago
  Really interesting. From the article: "Total Lead content in the glaze or coating of modern mugs (as detectable with an XRF) is not regulated. As long as mugs are not leaching Lead at the time of manufacture (when they are brand-new), they are considered to be safe to use — even if the Lead content of the glaze is very high. However, for context, the amount of Lead considered unsafe (and illegal) in the paint, glaze or coating of a newly-manufactured item manufactured and sold as “intended for use by children” is 90 ppm or higher. The good news is that, since children’s items are regulated for total Lead content (as of 2008), newly-purchased children’s mugs legally must have coatings below 90 ppm Lead [and my findings have confirmed that manufacturers are generally complying with this law — although I recommend sticking with children’s items manufactured in 2011 or later, as it took a while for the companies (and their supply chains) to get up to speed in their compliance with the new regulations]."
- ezekiel68 5y ago
  FWIW, every "recommended" mug in her current list is a glass mug, not a ceramic glaze mug. Which is no problem for me but this doesn't answer the original question. As a matter of fact, I ordered a new glass mug set from Amazon using a link in her article (which I assume is an affiliate link) out of gratitude for her work.

harles 5y ago

Does anyone know the credibility of this site or the journal this article is in? The subtitle is odd enough to make me question the legitimacy “comparison to California Safe Harbor Levels”.

spekcular 5y ago
It's run by a reputable publisher (Springer) and the editorial board consists of scientists at major universities: https://foodcontaminationjournal.biomedcentral.com/about/editorial-board https://foodcontaminationjournal.biomedcentral.com/about/edi....
- timr 5y ago
  It's not a great journal. Per the metrics: 0.882 - Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 0.37 - SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 4 - Cite Score This is a place where niche papers get published. Springer runs tons of crap journals. (for reference, SJR scores for all journals: https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php)
  - spekcular 5y ago
    Low citation count does not imply it's an untrustworthy journal. Sometimes niche knowledge is useful – as in the present case of food contamination studies!
    - timr 5y ago
      No, but it implies they have a low bar for acceptance. You can't take impact factor of the journal as the sole indicator of quality for a particular paper (even NEJM publishes garbage), but it should strongly influence your prior. Especially for general-interest studies like this, if the results were impactful and well done they'd be published in a better journal. Assuming that this is done well (I have no idea), the fact that it's in a super-niche journal means that it's likely not surprising/interesting to anyone in the field.

ldoughty 5y ago

My wife does pottery, and makes her own glazes. This is a major concern for potters, and you usually won't see a professional or semi-professional potter use lead in their glazes... Of course, if you're buying on Amazon, who knows.. but you are very, very unlikely to have this problem with people who make pottery for a living (like local artists, or reputable Etsy shops)..

stiray 5y ago
This is exactly what my wife said (also doing the pottery). Lead glazes are never used unless you use it for some "special effects" or you are playing it cheap.
- pengaru 5y ago
  > or you are playing it cheap Shouldn't we assume all this mass-produced pottery found on the shelves of Walmart and Bed Bath & Beyond is being made as cheaply as possible? I don't know about you, but the only time I see non-MADE IN CHINA pottery these days is used, at the thrift store. New stuff isn't generally coming from some domestic artisan who cares about poisoning their neighbors more than a bigger profit.
krisoft 5y ago
> but you are very, very unlikely to have this problem with people who make pottery for a living Amazon clearly doesn't use a mater compiler either. They buy their mugs from people who make pottery for a living. Perhaps the distinction is different? Maybe people who make pottery for a living in the developed world? Or perhaps people who make pottery for a living at smaller scales?
- CuriousCosmic 5y ago
  There's a bit of a distinction between people who make pottery for a living and people who run factories that churn out pottery. When the focus is mass production it stops being a craftsman's job and rather becomes a calculated process designed to extract as much profit as possible with little regard for anything else.

Yizahi 5y ago

If the tea and coffee comes with lead poisoning, well, screw it, I'll take it :)

tvb12 5y ago

It specifies that the source of the lead is the paint or glaze. I didn't think lead paint was still a thing, but some quick googling is making me a little nervous... It seems quite a few modern mugs contain some amount of lead.

spekcular 5y ago
Note it's not just lead, but also cadmium for bright colors. Trendy cookware manufacturer Le Creuset uses cadmium in many of their hues, for example. Many other enameled and ceramic cookware manufacturers do too. Some test results: https://tamararubin.com/2019/02/made-in-france-c-2013-yellow-le-creuset-enameled-sauce-pan-15800-ppm-cadmium-a-known-carcinogen/ https://tamararubin.com/2019/02/made-in-france-c-2013-yellow....
- Auracle 5y ago
  That’s incredibly frustrating. You shouldn’t need to worry about things like that from a high end manufacturer.
  - spekcular 5y ago
    It's unclear to me whether one should worry, assuming the glaze is intact. The cookware passes California prop 65 standards (extremely stringent). The coloration with the high cadmium levels is not on a surface that contacts food, and even if it was, I don't know that it would leach. But we have no way of knowing without expensive testing! However, even if we ignore the possibility of harm to the end user, I think the author of that blog makes a great point: "By using high levels of Cadmium in manufacturing, Le Creuset has – apparently for decades – been causal in contributing to “the demand for” the mining, refining and manufacturing of a toxic pigment that can (and does) poison others (workers, communities, waterways, the planet) through various processes/at multiple points throughout their manufactured products’ life cycles."
- amelius 5y ago
  Did they test how much of it actually ends up in cooked food? Also, those numbers don't tell me much, I want to know how this compares to lethal/toxic dose etc.

xyst 5y ago

I switched to stainless steel a long time ago. Only use ceramics as decoration or to hold fruit

laumars 5y ago
Stainless steal has lead in too. Is there any research that compares stainless steal to ceramics? Edit: ignore me. I’m confusing lead with iron. That’ll teach me posting while drinking.
- loeg 5y ago
  Lead is not used to make stainless steel.

5tefan 5y ago

Well. Gotta die from something anyway. Cannot avoid all that's around us nowadays or I'll die trying within a week from now. Seems to be the deal in our modern world. Also good to read the comments from real pottery artists to put it into perspective.

Aerroon 5y ago

Whenever I see studies/articles like this I wonder what is the safest material to eat from and store food in? My thinking always defaulted to glass. If it has been good enough for chemistry for hundreds of years perhaps it's good enough for food. But some glass also contains lead.

gruez 5y ago
stainless steel?
- evv555 5y ago
  Most metal food containers are coated with plastics like BPA. You can't trust "BPA free" labels because there are now analog compounds in use. For example this is what a dissolved coke can looks like.[1] 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQHFQoFoxvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQHFQoFoxvQ
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Most metal food containers are coated with plastics like BPA I doubt it. I put my stainless steel containers in the oven with no ill effects, so there probably isn't some plastic coating on them. Are you confusing disposable metal food containers (eg. aluminum cans) with stainless steel bowls/cups?
    - evv555 5y ago
      Specifically I had something like this in mind.[1] Granted that article is about reusable aluminum bottles but stainless steel can have its own coatings like teflon. It's not unreasonable to believe your stainless steel bowls are a safe choice but it takes a surprising amount of effort to verify if that's the case given precedents like these. 1. https://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20110712/some-aluminum-water-bottles-leach-bpa#1 https://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20110712/some-aluminum-water...
      - 5y ago

hprotagonist 5y ago

Cannabis consumers have know for a long time that colored glass pipes and bongs and the like are also suspicious, particularly if you don’t know the maker and their process, for the same reasons. Clear glass might look boring, but it’s a lot safer!

canadaduane 5y ago
Boring borosilicate glass is the best. Strong, heat resistant, and very safe.
- xaduha 5y ago
  There's a lot of soda-lime glass too though. Maybe not that crucial, but they don't seem to indicate on the surface what it is made of like they do with plastics.

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago

Blood lead levels did not increase above regulatory or guidance values.

civilized 5y ago
All blood lead is bad and levels well below guidance have measurable cognitive effects in children. So this is worth knowing about.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  > All blood lead is bad and levels well below guidance have measurable cognitive effects in children. Oh that's good to know, do you have a source?

jaclaz 5y ago

TLDR: > Overall, the potential for lead ingestion from contaminated ceramic mugs is minimal when compared to other sources, such as food. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) reported that the average daily intake of lead from food sources in the general population is approximately 56.5 μg/day (ATSDR 2007a). In comparison, the maximum daily lead intake from drinking 3.3 eight-ounce cups of coffee based on the data collected in our study resulted in a dose of 6.71 μg, over eight times less than the average daily lead intake from food. Nonetheless, exposure to lead should be minimized to the extent possible.

reducesuffering 5y ago

Just wait until you start testing all the brass-looking metal material in your home from before the 80s… Lamps, door handles, stained glass, it’s endless

ajhurliman 5y ago

The title appears neutral, but I can't help but think "I've definitely been unwittingly poisoning myself" when I read it. But then in the findings it basically says it's a complete non-issue. I wish they would have included the findings in the title, it feels like click-bait.

eganist 5y ago
> The title appears neutral, but I can't help but think "I've definitely been unwittingly poisoning myself" Probably because this abridged title isn't neutral (flagged accordingly). By simply stating "Lead exposure from [x]," the implication is that impactful exposure risk exists. The original title and even the condensed title (everything after the colon scrubbed) were both at least 18 characters too long, but a better abridgement of the title would've been "A pilot study to assess lead exposure from routine consumption from ceramic mugs" scrubbing the coffee/tea reference as the subject happens to be the mugs themselves
- smarx007 5y ago
  "An assessment of lead exposure from routine consumption of coffee and tea from ceramic mugs" should have been fine too.
  - eganist 5y ago
    True
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
smarx007 5y ago
There is an abstract in every academic paper and this paper had this bit in the abstract: "The estimated daily dose of lead exceeded the California Maximum Allowable Dose Level of 0.5 μg per day for one of the five mugs tested. Blood lead levels did not increase above regulatory or guidance values.". As others have written, "Blood lead levels did not increase" does not mean there is no long-term health problem, it was simply outside the scope of the publication. Academic paper titles are almost always describe what the paper is about, not what the conclusion is. Academics don't do frontloading, thankfully. Edit: to look into the title further, you can see that it starts with "A _pilot_ study". This can indicate that the sample size of 5 mugs was not a mistake and the main purpose of the paper is to get feedback on the methodology and a larger follow-up study may be underway and we shouldn't be deriving any (health-related) conclusions from this paper.

clavicat 5y ago

So that’s why I’m retarded.

politelemon 5y ago

For UK readers, here is the regulation around amount of lead and cadmium in ceramics that are in contact with food. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2006/1179/made https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2006/1179/made I'm not 100% sure of the maximum safe lead per day, though I did find this https://www.hse.gov.uk/lead/health-effects.htm https://www.hse.gov.uk/lead/health-effects.htm > The occupational exposure limit for lead in air set out in the Regulations is 0.15 mg/m3, and blood lead suspension levels for males and females are 60 and 30ug/dl, respectively. For young workers (under 18) the blood lead suspension limit is 50 μg/dl. But someone with better dotUKfu may provide a better source!

throwawayboise 5y ago
There's no "safe" level for lead exposure. The levels are for when various types of action are required.
- ezekiel68 5y ago
  That's a good sound bite, but -- if taken literally -- we have sadly evolved upon the wrong planet. Yes, we should minimize lead exposure but there is no actionable way for even 30% of the Earth's population to live at blood lead levels lower than 5 ug/dl.

ineedasername 5y ago

>The five mugs chosen for this study were selected because they were found to contain lead in a screening-level assessment. Specifically, 24 mugs from the authors’ office were tested This is an interesting (and maybe not too rigorous) method of selecting research samples, and points towards the need for another study: How representative was this 5:24 ratio of lead bearing mugs? Greater or less than what you would find in the broader mug population? It's also fun to imagine how the researchers came about this: --Was it boredom? ("Hey Shannon, I'm in between projects, how about we go see if there's anything in the kitchen area that could be dangerous?") --Maybe serendipitous? ("Shannon, I just read an excellent novel that happened to mention the role that lead plays in ceramics an enamel finishes. Let's have go at the office mug collection and see what we find!") --Brute force? ("Lead seems to get into everything these days... let's test every single thing in the office.")

fredophile 5y ago

I briefly looked at the article but don't see anything actionable from what it said. I could buy lead testing kits and check out all of my mugs at home. It looks like that would cost around $40 a test which seems a bit high for checking every mug I own given the low risk indicated in the link.

Dowwie 5y ago

"Overall, the potential for lead ingestion from contaminated ceramic mugs is minimal when compared to other sources, such as food. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) reported that the average daily intake of lead from food sources in the general population is approximately 56.5 μg/day (ATSDR 2007a). In comparison, the maximum daily lead intake from drinking 3.3 eight-ounce cups of coffee based on the data collected in our study resulted in a dose of 6.71 μg, over eight times less than the average daily lead intake from food. Nonetheless, exposure to lead should be minimized to the extent possible"

ezekiel68 5y ago

Blood lead levels did not increase above regulatory or guidance values. And this was after screening for the mugs with the highest concentrations of lead in their ceramic glaze. I think we're done here.