The dish on your table is doing the math whether you are or not.

DetectLead's ceramic database has 2,165 dishes scanned with a Niton XL5 Plus XRF analyzer. The decoration leaches into your food. Vintage, imported, hand-painted, hand-me-down — these are the categories that fail.

Why ceramic and cookware leach lead.

Lead in glazes makes colors brighter, finishes harder, and firing temperatures lower — useful and cheap properties for a manufacturer. The trade-off is that lead migrates out of the glaze when it contacts food, especially acidic food, and especially with heat or repeated washing. Acid extracts lead. Heat accelerates the extraction. Time multiplies it.

FDA's compliance limit for ceramic glaze is 0.5 mg/L for cups and 2.0 mg/L for plates as released into a 24-hour acetic acid extraction. That's the U.S. standard. Imported and "decorative use only" pieces are routinely tested above these limits and still get used as everyday dinnerware.

Categories that frequently test positive.

• Mexican-style hand-painted Talavera pottery
• Indian and South-Asian decorated dishes used for daily eating
• Vintage Pyrex, Corelle, CorningWare from before 1980 — particularly painted patterns
• Antique china tea sets and serving pieces
• Hand-painted "souvenir" pottery from travel
• Imported decorative tins and metal serving dishes
• Crockpot and slow-cooker liners on older vintage models
• Aluminum cookware imported from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
• Brass and copper alloy cooking pots, pre-2014
• Cracked or worn ceramic — the crack exposes the leaded interior layer
• "Display only" plates that ended up in the cupboard rotation

Two ways to clear your kitchen.

Path 1 · Look it up. DetectLead's open ceramic database covers 2,165 dishes scanned by XRF. Search by brand, pattern, or visual similarity at /check-your-dish. Most major retail patterns are in there.

Path 2 · Test it yourself. A drop of FluoroSpec on the food-contact decoration, 30 seconds, then UV. Bright green glow means lead. The brighter the glow, the higher the concentration.

Use both for the pieces that matter to you. The database is fast for branded retail. The drop test is decisive for vintage, imported, and hand-painted pieces nobody has scanned before.

If a piece tests positive.

A leaded plate doesn't have to leave the house. It just has to leave the kitchen. Move it from the cupboard rotation to a display shelf and the food-contact pathway is broken — no acid, no heat, no migration. The piece keeps its sentimental value; your dinner doesn't pay the price.

For high-stakes pieces (the everyday set, the kid's bowl), the answer is simpler: replace it. Modern Made-in-USA stoneware and porcelain from major brands is consistently clean. The dishware audit is one of the highest-leverage interventions per dollar in this whole journey.

Two starting points.

For the broader picture — paint, water, food, supplements — start at the journey entry.