The green glow that was never supposed to be yours.

A small group in the Netherlands tried to lock up the method for seeing lead and sell it back to you in a tiny bottle. I rebuilt it to catch lead more clearly, put three times the liquid in your hands for a fifth of the price, and pointed the whole thing at one job: finding lead before it gets into a kid.

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✓ Registered with the US EPA, TSCA Section 5 LVE (L-25-0206) ✓ Made and shipped in the USA ✓ No investors, no middlemen

Real plate. Real lead. Filmed once, no edit.

Watch the whole thing, start to finish.

Four minutes. How a published lab trick became a patent fight, and how it ended up cheaper and in your hands. Best with sound on.

Play the story film

How a chemical that hates lead
turned into a fight.

Told by Eric Ritter, the founder of Fluoro-Spec. Every claim here is on the public record or in the published literature.

One

It starts with a chemical that hates lead.

There is a compound called methylammonium bromide. When it touches lead, it builds a microscopic crystal called a perovskite, and that crystal throws off a sharp green light under a 365 nm UV flashlight. White ceramic stays dark. Only the lead lights up.

I did not invent this. It was demonstrated and published by Holtus and colleagues in 2018, then Yan, then Wang. Peer-reviewed, public, sitting in plain sight for anyone who reads chemistry papers. The science was already done.

Two

A group in the Netherlands tried to make it theirs.

A company called Lumetallix took experiments that were already done and already published, ran them again, and filed to patent a method for detecting lead. They kept the actual formula a secret, even from the US government. Then they sold it back to people in tiny bottles for a lot of money.

I knew the people behind it. Years ago I told Wim and Lukas this could not be patented. I offered them money and asked them to work on trace detection with me instead. Something else happened.

Three

So I went and built it the right way.

I helped design their first consumer blend. I imported it and sold it here. But the bottles were too small, the formula was hidden, and the price was too high for the people who needed it most.

So I got the licenses to legally manufacture the chemical in the United States. Not to get away with something. To do it in the open. I am the only person in the country permitted to make and sell this compound commercially, which means I never have to hide an ingredient or water it down to keep it secret.

Four

More sensitive. Three times the liquid. A fifth of the price.

Same chemistry on both sides. What changed is everything around it. I tripled the volume, brightened the UV light, sell straight to you with no investors to pay back, and put a US EPA registration on file so it is a real, declared product.

The honest math: to get 30 ml of drip reagent at their prices you would buy three of their 10 ml bottles, around two hundred and thirty seven dollars. My drip kit gives you the same 30 ml for fifty.

See the full side-by-side →

Same reagent. Different deal.

Spec	Theirs	Mine
Drip bottle volume	10 ml	30 ml	3×
Total reagent, full lineup	19 ml	60 ml	~3×
Price per ml of drip reagent	~$7.90	~$1.67	~5× less
US EPA TSCA registration	Not disclosed	LVE L-25-0206	on file
Active chemistry	MABr / IPA	MABr / IPA	same

Five

Then I mapped where lead actually hides.

Lead is not just old paint. It is in painted dishes and glassware, in some spices, in old jewelry and toys, in the soil by the house, in the service line under the street. A test with no map just makes you anxious. A map with no test just makes you guess.

So I built the rest of it too, and made it free: a database to check your dishes, a calculator for lead in food, a baby-food lookup, a map that scores the lead risk of your zip code. The kit finds it. The tools tell you where to point the kit.

Check your dishes Food calculator Your zip risk

Six

Why I care this much.

When I started selling lead swabs, most of the people who bought them had already had a kid get poisoned. They were testing the house after the damage was done. That broke something in me and it is the reason I am still at this.

Lead does not usually kill you. It quietly changes who you become. A few points of IQ, a little less impulse control, decisions a person makes differently for the rest of their life and never knows why. If catching it early protects that for even one kid, the whole thing was worth building. This is about prevention, not reaction.

Pick the door that fits your house.

Same volume of reagent at the Dutch price runs about $237. Here is what it costs from me, with the UV light included.

Most complete

I want everything

30 ml drip plus 30 ml spray, the 365 nm UV light, the extender ring, and the reference card. About 3,600 drip tests and 500 sprays.

$75 Full Kit

Get the Full Kit

Paint, trim, dishes

The 30 ml drip bottle with the green-tip applicator. Precise drops for the small stuff. About 3,600 tests.

$50 Drip Kit

Get the Drip Kit

Walls and big surfaces

The 30 ml spray bottle with the extender ring for wider coverage. About 500 sprays.

$50 Spray Kit

Get the Spray Kit

Every kit ships with the UV flashlight and the reference card. In stock. Made and shipped in the USA.

Real items, pulled from real homes.

None of these were sold as lead. This is what the kit actually catches.

The chemistry is published. The kit is just a product.

"If I can catch lead before it gets into a kid, and protect even a little of who that kid was going to become, then every bit of this was worth it."

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Fluoro-Spec Inc. Registered with the US EPA under a TSCA Section 5 Low Volume Exemption (LVE L-25-0206). It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling and intended use.
Questions: eric@fluorospect.com · 631-461-1838 · Safety Data Sheet · Safety & handling