Blue willow pattern pate. Photo by J. Yolkowsky. Wikimedia Commons
(Click on the following link to listen to an audio version of this blog ….Lead Part 2
(Continuing our discussion of lead in the environment ….)
Glazes on dishes and dinnerware are another possible source of lead exposure. Dishes made before the mid-1970’s are likely to have lead in their glazes. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) began to regulate lead in dishes in 1971, and over the past fifty+ years they have enacted stricter and stricter standards for acceptable lead levels in dishes, bowls, serving platters and other pieces that come in contact with food.
Dishes that contain lead glazes that are then washed in dishwashers are much more likely to have compromised glazing surfaces and are much more likely to leach lead into foods. My son-in-law, Dr. B. Lee Drake, brought this to my attention concerning the everyday plates that we have been using at our home for years. These plates were previously owned by my parents. They were the plates I grew up eating off of, they were the plates my children grew up eating off of, and now they were the plates my grandchildren were starting to eat off of! The plates and their accompanying bowls and platers were a Blue Willow oriental design probably purchased in the early 1960’s. They had been regularly washed in the dishwasher and most had random small chips and cracks.
Briker Corporation XRF gun.
Lee is an expert in the use of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) technology. During his PhD work at the University of New Mexico, he developed ways to use XRF analyzers to determine the elemental composition of archeological relics. After he completed his PhD he went to work for the Bruker Corporation (the company that makes XRF Analyzers) doing workshops all around the world teaching researchers how to use the XRF “guns” to analyze artworks, archeological relics and everyday objects. Lee now has his own company that primarily deals with the exploration and analysis of very large data sets, but he still uses his XRF Analyzer on a variety of studies of both museum and field materials.
If you would like to learn more about XRF technology, I would recommend Lee’s recent book which he co-edited with B. L MacDonald, Advances in Portable X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry: Instrumentation, Application and Interpretation 1st Edition (Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry (October 19, 2022)). It is available on Amazon, but I might recommend that you get your University library to purchase a copy because it is a bit pricey!
XRF Analyzers use X-rays to determine the composition of the elements in a sample object. The Analyzer generates a pulse of X-rays that strike the sample object causing the elements in it to then generate a set of their own, unique X-rays. The Analyzer then measures the energy in these re-emitted X-rays and is then able to identify the elements in the sample object.
Lee brought his XRF gun over and tested our dinner plates. They were way off the scale for lead!
Place setting. Photo by Ludek. Wikimedia Commons
We also tested an old set of China that I had also inherited from my parents. It, too, dated back to the 1950’s or 1960’s. XRF Analysis of these plates also indicated very high levels of lead. A very elegant ceramic pie plate, stoneware serving dishes from a pottery in Oklahoma, ceramic mugs that had been in Deborah’s family for decades, a ceramic gravy boat, some very old English tea cups and saucers and several other well-used and well-loved pieces all showed very high levels of lead in their glazes. We had to, with great sadness and emotional regret, dispose of most of these pieces. We couldn’t run the risk of continued lead exposure. Some of the pieces, though, we decided to keep as artworks for display recognizing that we shouldn’t eat or drink from them.
Exposure, especially chronic exposure, to high amounts of lead can disrupt the functioning of the brain (“encephalopathy”). Symptoms of this brain disruption may include dullness, irritability, reduced attention span and may even progress to convulsions, coma and death. Many organ systems of the body are affected by lead including the cardiovascular system (high blood pressure leading to possible heart attacks and strokes) and the digestive system (stomach pain, constipation and vomiting). Lead also affects liver and kidney functions and can accumulate in and weaken the bones of the body.
Many adults, even though they have elevated lead levels in their bodies have few or even no overt symptoms. In 2021, there were 1.5 million deaths worldwide that were attributable to elevated blood lead levels. Most of these deaths were in people living in less developed countries where lead levels are not carefully regulated, and most of these deaths were due to lead-caused, cardiovascular complications.
Photo by J. Estey. Wikimedia Commons
Children are particularly vulnerable to lead poisoning. Their developing brains may be irreversibly damaged by exposure to lead. Lead in drinking water may accumulate in children (as we saw in the Flint, Michigan case of 2014 to 2016 and which we see in many other cities all across the country particularly in older, urban areas where lead pipe water lines deliver drinking water into homes). Lead from older, often peeling paints inside a house or on older toys may be ingested by children in contaminated dust or even via compulsive consumption of picked off flakes and paint chips.
Children typically experience a loss of appetite, abdominal pain, weight loss, constipation, anemia, lethargy, irritability, slow development, learning disabilities and impaired intellectual abilities when they are exposed to lead poisoning. A July, 2020 report by UNICEF and Pure Earth stated that lead poisoning was affecting children around the world on a “massive and previously unknown scale.” The report indicated that one in three children worldwide (800 million children!) have dangerously elevated levels of blood lead.
There is no “antidote” for lead once it gets into the body. Treatment with chemicals that then circulate through the body’s tissues and organs and “chelate” (bind up with) the poisoning lead atoms is the only recognized way to reduce the lead once it is inside the body. These chelating agents ( IV administered EDTA or dimercaptosuccinic acid, or orally administered D-penicillamine) are effective but may cause other problems in the body (including kidney damage, allergic reactions, blood pressure disruptions and bone pain).
Stomeware bowl with lead glaze
If you have some older dinnerware or stoneware pieces that you would like to check for lead and are not fortunate enough to have a son-in-law who is an XRF expert, there are some home-test kits for lead detection. These kits usually contain chemically-coated swabs that form a color reaction when they come into contact with lead. Often the test swabs contain either sodium rhodizonate or sodium sulfide which turn red (or pink) when they complex with lead. These home test kits are easy to use and widely available, but their reliability is somewhat suspect. Many false positives and false negatives have been reported by laboratories analyzing these testing materials.
Lead is a serious problem! Those of us growing up in the decades between 1921 and the early 1970’s were exposed to massive amounts of lead with every breath we took! Lead was in all of painted surfaces around us, it was in the water we drank and in the food we ate off of lead-glazed plates! Many of these extreme sources of lead have been eliminated, but as one lead researcher so perfectly put it “no level of lead exposure is safe!”