global NGO (formerly blacksmith institute). market surveys for cookware, spices, cosmetics, paint, and toys across 27 countries, mostly low- and middle-income markets where lead enforcement is weak. 5,153 measurements covering 3,472 products.
pure earth is the global NGO formerly known as the blacksmith institute. they work on lead exposure in low- and middle-income countries, places where leaded paint is still legal, leaded gasoline only just got banned, and consumer products go untested.
their lead exposure surveys are how the world knows what is on the shelves in markets in india, mexico, pakistan, georgia, indonesia, and dozens of other countries. this slice of the database is 5,153 measurements covering 3,472 unique products across 27 countries.
the categories they cover most heavily: cookware (1,790 measurements), spices (1,100), cosmetics (905), paint (470), and toys (417). pure earth is the dominant source for paint in the database, they keep finding oil-based house paints in the global south testing at 80% lead by mass, decades after the US banned them.
they publish their datasets openly under CC-BY through zenodo. that is rare and valuable, and it is most of why this database is global rather than just US-focused.
Pure Earth contributed measurements to 11 of the 13 categories in the lead database. each card links to the full sortable table for that category, where you can filter by source = "Pure Earth" to see only these rows.
metals tested: lead.
units: normalized to ppb (parts per billion by mass), identical to µg/kg. 1,000 ppb = 1 ppm = 1 mg/kg = 0.0001%. recall records (where the original notice did not publish a concentration) are flagged in the table as "recall record" rather than a number.
license: cite Pure Earth (CC-BY). when you reuse rows from this source, attribute the original source. the unified database itself is published under CC-BY-SA 4.0.
official source: https://zenodo.org/records/10444602
the lead database hub stitches together Pure Earth with eight other open-license sources for a unified, searchable view of consumer-product heavy-metal data. nine sources, thirteen categories, 67,497 measurements, all normalized to the same units.
six tools my family uses to keep our kid under the fda action threshold. type your email. you get all six on this page in two seconds.
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bookmark this page. the database and the leaducational pages update almost every day. the bottle sheet and the dish list grow as the lab finishes new runs.
the information is free. the kit is for parents who, after reading the framework, decide they want to walk around the nursery with a drop bottle tonight. one drop of fluoro-spec on the painted side of a plate. if it's lead, it glows green in seconds. no lab.
see the drip kit, $50 →