Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Measuring the amount of lead (Pb) consumed when drinking from lead crystal glassware. Is it safe?



I show a "DIY" chemical color-based method to determine the amount of lead in water, and then use the method to measure the amount of lead extracted from various types of lead crystal glassware.










Skip to 27:05 to see the detailed results 

Code, analysis, raw data, more references: https://github.com/benkrasnow/LeadCrystal 

Average daily lead consumption: 50ug in early 1980s, about 2/3 of this came from food and water https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18340799W/Food_contamination_from_environmental_sources?edition=unset0000unse_z0t6 

The FDA established a maximum daily intake for Pb called the Interim Reference Level (IRL). The IRL for children and adults is 3 μg/day and 12.5 μg/day, respectively. In 2022, FDA tightened its Interim Reference Levels (IRLs) for lead to 2.2 µg/day for children and 8.8 µg/day for females of childbearing age—a drop of 27% from the original IRLs it established in 2018. 

(2011) The estimated average daily dietary exposure of the French population to lead was 18 μg for adults aged 15 years or more https://apps.who.int/food-additives-contaminants-jecfa-database/Home/Chemical/3511 


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