The only other issue is that the Lead Free Mamas is providing affiliate links to sell some of the products they test and could definitely be seen as a conflict of interest.
Is it? What harms would that prevent? How much would preventing those harms cost? Is the cost worth the gain?
They may be right that the limits are too high! Lead is really bad! But an article telling me that toothpaste is within the limits considered acceptable by the FDA, with no argument that those limits are too high, is not answering the questions I'm interested in.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead#Biological_effects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning
In an ideal world, we would want no lead in our food and toothpaste (etc). But, I'm sure it's not economically possible for manufacturers/farmers to completely eliminate it, but it would be wise to avoid products that contain high levels of it.
Recall the Flint, Michigan lead pipes environment disaster, for example of a worse case scenario https://www.nrdc.org/stories/flint-water-crisis-everything-y...
For food, you can use lead-free soil in clean-air areas to grow practically lead-free food/feed. You can't well filter it out of the finished product, that's right.
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.
Once the teeth start coming in, feel free to switch them to fluoride toothpaste?
Plaque bacteria are best killed by mouth wash, not by toothpaste, and fluoride doesn't remove plaque itself any better than grit does.
With CPC mouthwash available the "but we need to microdose neurotoxins" arguments sound like 1950's doctors advocating cigarettes more every year.
In fact, I have used nothing but water (don’t worry, it’s fluoridated water!) to moisten a toothbrush and scrub my teeth, and guess what, even without any paste or gel, my teeth get really clean because it’s the bristles that remove food particles and scuzz from the surface of living bone.
Romans developed quite effective hygiene techniques by using powders. Again, a mechanical action of rubbing abrasive material against very resilient and living bones.
You’ll recall that handwashing also derives most of its benefits from the mechanical action of rubbing hands, soap forming bubbles, and those bubbles carrying away dirt down the drain as you rinse them away. “Foaming soap dispensers”, and hand sanitizers, and other fakery are robbing Americans of that all-important mechanical action.
It is actually quite difficult to formulate a natural tooth powder that lasts long enough (shelf stable) because they tend to get nasty with fungus and bacteria growing in the receptacle itself. Modern toothpastes are absolutely disgusting to human palates, because they are loaded with preservatives and stuff so that you can set the tube on the edge of your sink for seven years and not be infected by the substance itself.
It is a shame that worldwide supplies of lead and cadmium are contaminated by traces of toothpaste. Hopefully Secretary Kennedy can fight to Make America Healthy Again.
Watching this comment tick down with more and more downvotes from people who get paid cushy software engineer salaries is absolutely comical.
But, I went on Consumer Reports recently looking for a good smoke detector and saw they are now using affiliate links for the products they test as well, and I consider them well established and above board. So, everyone will have to make their own ethical judgment on how to take the results.
Summary, the samurai passed all their standard rollover tests and got great remarks from the test drivers about its handling and maneuverability. So they changed the test specifically to make it fail, and kept trying until it failed. Then they presented that failure as happening under normal conditions, singled out the samurai by name, and said it easily rolled in cornering despite their own testing showing it was actually quite difficult to make it roll.
As a result, Suzuki and Isuzu both left the usdm. Today, the Suzuki Jimny is one of the most popular SUVs in the world and America can't have it because consumer reports lied deliberately to American consumers.
This is slightly unrelated, but I remember in the 2000s, there was a vendor of protein powders who started testing his and other vendors protein powders to see if their labels were true & they weren't protein spiking (adding cheaper collagen instead of whey lying on the labels, essentially). He almost immediately got sued from several large mfgs and had to shut down.
So, for this group, and the fact that they're ignoring cease & desist letters from the toothpaste mfgs they're testing puts them in HUGE legal risk, I suspect, and would not be the least bit surprised if all the funds they're collecting are going to end up in lawyers pockets.
My dude, what do you think those affiliate links are?
"The numbers are juxtaposed (in blue) to the “Action Level” proposed by the medical and scientific community in 2021 as part of the Baby Food Safety Act. ... The legitimacy of these levels as “Action Levels”/ “Levels of Concern” (even though they were not adopted as law) is mirrored by the legitimacy of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ level of concern for Lead in water, which is 1 ppb despite the FDA’s official “level of concern” for Lead in water being 15 ppb (you can read more about that here)."
From here: https://tamararubin.com/2025/02/crest-regular-toothpaste/
I only checked crest because I like fluoride.
Crest is at 7980% of the action level for lead, 300% for mercury, and 60% for arsenic.
For lead, later they say they detected 0.399mg/kg, which is 399 ppb by mass. The molecular weight of lead is 207.2. The molecular weight of water is 18.015. I'm not sure how the regulators calculate PPB, but dividing that out, I get 35.5 lead atoms per billion water molecules, which is above 15.
What consequences arise if the lead content of all supplements, toothpaste, food, water, and other substances is comprehensively calculated?
https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-food/lea...
The action levels for processed foods intended for babies and young children are as follows: * 10 parts per billion (ppb) for fruits, vegetables (excluding single-ingredient root vegetables), mixtures (including grain- and meat-based mixtures), yogurts, custards/puddings, and single-ingredient meats; * 20 ppb for single-ingredient root vegetables; and * 20 ppb for dry infant cereals.
The FDA has not established a specific, legally binding limit for lead content in dietary supplements, but it has developed interim reference levels (IRLs) for daily lead intake. These IRLs are 2.2 mcg per day for children and 8.8 mcg per day for females of childbearing age.
Which would put even the most contaminated products in their chart at the "safer than water" level.
I think it's fair to say we're looking at junk science here.