Home Lead Tests Fail to Find Lead

Worried parents who reacted to the flood of lead-tainted Chinese imports by conducting their own tests of their toddlers' toys are in for some more bad news.

The Consumer Products Safety Commission said today that many of the tests designed for home use just don't work.

The commission conducted 104 tests of tests designed for use at home by consumers. The tests relied on chemical reactions involving samples scraped from toy surfaces. More than half of the tests were dead wrong.

Most errors (56) were false negatives—that is, they didn't find lead when it was actually present. Two others produced false positives—finding lead when there was none.

No word from the commission on whether any of the tests were made in China, but it did suggest they were more or less a waste of time. "Based on the study," the commission said, "consumers should not use lead test kits to evaluate consumer products for potential lead hazards."

All's not lost, the commission added. X-ray fluorescence tests used by professional laboratories correctly identified lead-tainted products in 12 of 13 trials.

"Testing by a qualified laboratory and trained personnel is the only way to accurately assess the potential risk posed by a consumer product that may contain lead," the commission concluded.

by Mark Stein