CASE Case Study · DetectLead

DETECTLEAD · New & expecting parents being handed family heirlooms

Grandma's cot is worth everything. Test it before the baby chews it.

The only heirloom test you can run in 30 seconds.

When your mother brings down the cot she rocked you to sleep in, wrapped in the same quilt, smelling like her house, she is handing you the single most loaded gift of your adult life. She's also handing you a painted surface that was mixed in a factory before lead was regulated. One of those things you want to keep. One of those things you need to find out about. Fluoro-Spec is how you find out without hurting her feelings.

What to look at, in order:

Painted crib / cot

Pre-1980 paint commonly contained lead. Babies chew the rail. The flakes go in the mouth. We have a real case in the archive of a mother pulling chips out of her toddler's mouth from a repainted 1940s cot.

Vintage high chair

Same vintage, same paint era. The kid eats off the tray, the kid licks the tray, the kid teethes on the back rail.

Wooden rocking horse / pull-toy

Hand-painted finishes from any era pre-CPSIA (2008) might be lead-pigmented. Beautiful, sentimental, testable in seconds.

Painted chest of drawers

Old paint chips, old hardware, drawer pulls toddlers grab as they stand up.

A mother in the archive tested a repainted 1940s cot her daughter had been chewing. Pulled flakes out of the kid's mouth. The cot had been repainted in 1971 over a 1940s base coat. Sentimental. Generational. Toxic.

The test that takes 30 seconds.

One drop on any glaze, paint, or surface. UV pen. Glow green = lead. Thousands of tests per kit.

Get the Drip Tip Bottle Kit · $50
Got 3+ heirlooms? The Full Kit · $75

Get the Drip Tip Bottle Kit · $50