I have kids, and I also definitely agree that it's better if lead is not in there at all. The whole lead in gasoline story is ridiculous and traumatizing.
I'm just not sold on the idea of testing/researching products and getting rid of them based on what I've learned these last 10 minutes. It seems to me that it would be multiple orders of magnitude more important to test your vegetables if you are a lead-minimizer?
And what about soil? E.g. in context of playgrounds. Soil is 15-40ppm Pb. Really bad toy from 90s is 5000ppm. Exposure surface * time * ppm. Based on that equation it seems that testing playground soil would be much more important.
Assuming your lead-heavy plate completely disappears after 10 years of every day usage just ponder how much of it ended up in your belly compared to dishwasher cycles. If 1% of it disappeared, and you ate 1% of what dishwasher did, then it's equivalent to eating the dish weight of carrots during these 10 years.
I have no idea why I'm defending leaded dishware here, I do not recommend anybody keep their leaded anything based on erroneous math and data from some random HN comment. I would just like to learn if there is something I'm missing that would change my understanding of the problem.
Ok, that's reasonable, and I don't have any good answers. I just get rid of things and call it good, but the food is a big question, and it's not fair to the kids to completely forbid playgrounds.
Lead dust in houses is a well studied hazard. The folks at the county department tell me the things they address first are lead paint (interior and exterior house paint and soil around the house), lead in the tap water, and vinyl mini-blinds. Abating those sources almost always drops BLL in the kids. If that isn't enough, they go after toys and dishes. If I remember right, testing of food is not yet in their protocol.
For me the decision to get rid of the dishes was trivially simple. I'd be glad to find out that the food we ate off those dishes miraculously failed to pick up any of the lead that so easily rubbed off on my swabs. I don't think that's likely.
Same with the kids toys and art supplies. Sure, I can tell little kids not to lick their arylics, but why wouldn't I also make sure the yellows are cadmium-free, just in case they forget and eat a sandwich with paint on their fingers?
I generally agree. Anything you are consuming that contains lead is much more concerning than food contacting a dish with a low amount of lead for a short amount of time (implying minimal to negligible transfer).
Honestly, the amount of lead in dishes and crystal (when it even contains it) is low. If you keep the contact time with the food low and there's no cracks/chips/dust, then you're fine. As an example, generally drinking from crystal is fine, but leaving a drink in a crystal decanter is not.
I'm just not sold on the idea of testing/researching products and getting rid of them based on what I've learned these last 10 minutes. It seems to me that it would be multiple orders of magnitude more important to test your vegetables if you are a lead-minimizer?
And what about soil? E.g. in context of playgrounds. Soil is 15-40ppm Pb. Really bad toy from 90s is 5000ppm. Exposure surface * time * ppm. Based on that equation it seems that testing playground soil would be much more important.
Assuming your lead-heavy plate completely disappears after 10 years of every day usage just ponder how much of it ended up in your belly compared to dishwasher cycles. If 1% of it disappeared, and you ate 1% of what dishwasher did, then it's equivalent to eating the dish weight of carrots during these 10 years.
I have no idea why I'm defending leaded dishware here, I do not recommend anybody keep their leaded anything based on erroneous math and data from some random HN comment. I would just like to learn if there is something I'm missing that would change my understanding of the problem.