Is it the lead, or are you just like this?

You saw the episode. The glow is real chemistry. Spray, shine the light, and know in thirty seconds. Your childhood windowsill is a suspect.

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$75 kit. $52.50 with the code, free US shipping.
The button applies the code for you.

How it works

1. Spray it or drip it

On paint, dishes, dust, or tools. Anything from a house built before 1978. Your place, your mom's place, the thrift haul.

2. Hit it with the UV light

The 365nm flashlight comes in the box. Turn the room lights off first.

3. Lead glows green

Bright green glow means lead is there. No glow where you tested means no lead pigment found. You know right away, standing in your kitchen.

The chemistry, for the ones who will ask. Methylammonium bromide in isopropanol meets lead and forms perovskite quantum dots. They glow green under UV. Chemists publish papers on this exact reaction. It is an instrument, not a mood ring.

★ CODE: SAM

The Sam deal

Full kit
$75 $52.50
with code SAM. 30% off and free US shipping.
What's in the box
Spray bottle, good for about 500 sprays with the extender ring. Drip bottle, good for about 3,600 drip tests. A 365nm UV flashlight and a fluorescent reference card.
Want two?
Two kits run $105 total. One for your place. One for the house that made you like this.

Do not end up in the minority

The joke in the comments is that lead made everybody like this. The joke is downstream of real numbers. Here they are.

What lead does to a whole population

Drag the slider. The curve is everybody's IQ. Raise the blood lead and the whole curve slides left. Nobody feels it happen. The tails are where it shows up.

0.0
IQ points gone, population average
2.3%
Under IQ 70, the intellectual disability range
15.9%
Under IQ 85, the low-average range
2.3%
Over IQ 130, the gifted range

Curve math from the pooled blood lead and IQ data (Lanphear and colleagues, 2005, seven studies, 1,333 children). Standard deviation held at 15 points.

Top 2.5%

The CDC's 3.5 µg/dL flag is not a safety line. It is the 97.5th percentile of US kids. Cross it and you are in the worst 2.5 percent. That is the minority to stay out of.

4.1×

The ADHD odds for kids in the highest blood lead fifth against the lowest. That is 4,704 American children in the federal health survey (Braun, 2006). The high group starts at 2.0 µg/dL, which is under the CDC flag.

129 of 187

We logged 187 real poisoning cases from the last four years. This kit would have caught 129 of them in thirty seconds. Read all 187.

The unfunny part, briefly

HUD's national housing survey found lead paint in most US homes built before 1978. The damage is quiet. Window friction grinds paint into dust. Dust gets on hands and food. Kids take the worst of it. Painted decorations on old dishes are the other repeat offender. The kit finds it on the spot. Nothing gets mailed to a lab.

If you rent old housing, fix up houses, or have a kid crawling around a pre-78 rental, this is the cheapest test gear you will ever own. The safety data sheet is at detectlead.com/sds.

Questions? Email eric@detectlead.com. Eric answers his own email.

Get the kit, $52.50 shipped, code SAM →