#my internet research hasn't lead me anywhere

[latalpavolante]

Hey guys this is very much not Sims related but does anybody happen to be into late 19th early 20th century German décadence poetry and can help me find a certain poem because I'm about to lose my mind 🙃

[intergalactic-zoo]

This post is a great and frustrating example of just how difficult it is to find any kind of reliable consumer safety information on the Internet right now.

Lead is dangerous. We've known that lead exposure is dangerous for a very, very long time, and it didn't stop corporations from using lead in everything from paint to gasoline and spreading misinformation and disinformation to suppress safety concerns so that corporations could continue making money even if it meant widespread health problems and brain damage to entire generations. This is just plain, historical fact.

So the claim that popular plates from the 1970s-80s might have unsafe levels of lead—even if standards at the time suggested they may be safe, even if the company now is saying they're safe to eat off of—is entirely plausible. Even finding lead in more recently-produced plates would not be impossible, as companies have outsourced production to overseas contractors in an effort to reduce costs and increase profit margins (and to insulate themselves from the inevitable scandals). This has happened with children's toys multiple times in my memory (see: 1, 2, 3).

But it's also true that fearmongering is easy on the Internet, and there are a lot of people, particularly people with a vested interest in selling some kind of alternative, who will stoke reasonable fears of dangerous substances like lead by playing on the general public's ignorance about how things like chemistry and biology actually work (or, more charitably, people who do not understand chemistry or biology as well as they think they do, and end up spreading misinformation as a result). As someone who's been involved in science and skepticism on the Internet for the better part of 20 years at this point, I have to say that Lead Safe Mama, aka Tamara Rubin (the source of the original infographic) throws up a lot of red flags, and her page feels like it has more in common with pseudoscientists like Food Babe or Dr. Mercola than reputable science pages. But that alone doesn't mean she's unreliable, it's more a vibe than anything else. That said, she does not appear to have any scientific education or background. Her credentials to speak on the issue are (as far as I can tell from some brief research) having children who experienced lead poisoning, serving in leadership positions on two lead safety advocacy nonprofits, and taking a one-day certification course in the use of the x-ray fluorescence device she uses to do much of her lead testing in 2009, along with years of being an activist on this issue.

There's also a lot of people online with a vested interest in dismissing the claims of skeptics and people raising reasonable concerns about dangerous products, whether it's the Reddit threads full of people saying "well it hasn't killed me yet, so it must be fine" or the people grasping for any excuse to justify their antique collections or their fandom for a particular product. Corelle (and similar brands affected by claims like those made by Lead Safe Mama) have a vested interest in arguing that their old products are safe, whether or not that's actually the case, because there's no incentive to do a recall or pull items off the shelves when they're complying with current standards, and admitting any kind of danger would potentially open them up to liability and lawsuits.

All those conflicting interests make it difficult to find reliable information, particularly when it doesn't seem like any independent labs or agencies have conducted studies of the relevant dishes. So what do we know?

The original claim is based on testing done by Tamara Rubin for her Lead Safe Mama blog. If we take her at her word and ignore my misgivings about her and her site, then she arrived at her conclusions by using X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), a technique that effectively uses light to determine what elements are present in a sample. It's a method recognized and used by organizations like the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to test for lead and other chemicals in items, particularly those used by children (see: 1, 2, 3). It also has limitations, particularly when used on thin films such as paints (see: 1, 2).

The Snopes article (written by Alex Kasprak) that covers the broad "will the lead in this product poison me" claims stemming from Rubin and other sources cites pharmacology professor (and former colleague of Rubin's) Howard Mielke, who calls XRF a "first step" in determining whether something has unsafe levels of lead in it, which is consistent with the CPSC's description of XRF's limitations and use as a "screening" tool. The Snopes article goes on to make the point that in order to determine safety, you have to determine how much of the lead is likely to actually be ingested, which XRF can't establish.

Which brings us to the more inflammatory, definitive claim, that "Corelle said any dish made before 2005 should be decorative." I've seen notes on this post saying that Milksolid, who posted the infographic, later said that was a hoax. I've seen notes saying that Snopes debunked this claim. I haven't dug into Milksolid's posting history to see whether that's true or not, but the basic claim comes from the same post of Rubin's as the infographic. She shares an e-mail that was shared to her from a reader named Jessica, coming from Corelle. The text of the e-mail reads (emphasis added):

From: Monica “Thank you for contacting contacting Corelle Brands. Prior to the 1990s, virtually all glass and ceramic ware made anywhere in the world contained Lead as a primary ingredient in the decorating fluxes and glazes. All our products have been Lead free since the mid-2000’s. Lead content has never been regulated until recently. We recommend using the items you have as decorative pieces. We hope this information is helpful. Sincerely, Monica Corelle Brands”

Now, there's a lot we have to kind of accept on faith here, that a journalist or investigator would really be interested in following up on: that Jessica is a legitimate source and is not trolling Rubin (or a fabrication), that this e-mail is genuine, that Monica is a legitimate employee of Corelle and is authorized to speak on behalf of the company on this matter, and so forth. So, not surprisingly, it seems a writer from Snopes (Dan MacGuill) reached out to Rubin to receive further clarification on these sources.

Rubin's response was to write four posts in the same day (1, 2, 3, 4) about her history with Snopes, which read a whole lot like axe-grinding. At the time, as she cites, Snopes had written four articles that mention her or her work (1, 2, 3, 4):

"Vintage Pyrex Contains Unsafe Levels of Lead?" by Kim LaCapria, Dec. 1 2016, rated "Unproven," stresses that Rubin's posts making the claim did not include a testing methodology, that other people conducting tests found conflicting results, and that the thorough documentation of Pyrex's recipe does not indicate any presence of lead at any point or any changes in response to the FDA's changing regulatory standards regarding lead.

"Do 'Fidget Spinners' Contain Deadly Amounts of Lead?" by Dan Evon, Jun. 3 2017, rated "Mixture," cites Rubin's own posts & incredulity about how her tests (which showed a minority of tested fidget spinners had positive lead results) were being spun into fearmongering headlines and rumors. Also mentions that her tests have not been replicated or peer reviewed.

"Do Walmart Jelly Sandals Contain Lead?" by Dan Evon, Jun. 10 2017, rated "Unproven," cites Rubin's negative lead tests in opposition to a post about a positive result from a home lead test kit. Stresses that users differed on the results from these home test kits; note that this is the same result given in the Pyrex article where inconsistent results were also found.

"Does This Cookware or Children’s Toy Contain Dangerous Levels of Lead?" by Alex Kasprak, Mar. 19 2019, gives overall background on Rubin, her methods, and what additional information needs to be known before determining the risk level of coming into contact with or consuming the lead even when it's present. Ends with the overall point that Rubin's methods are generally sound and identify products that have a higher risk of lead contamination.

Rubin's posts detail her encounter with Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson (1, 2), where she confronted him about how Snopes has sometimes cited her as an expert and sometimes has tried to discredit her. You can read the transcript of her discussion with Mikkelson at the link; in my opinion, she seriously misrepresents how she was cited by those articles, and their conclusions (for example, she says she was cited as an expert in the "Walmart jellies" article and that she had "disproven that myth," when Snopes rated that as unproven and cited her as one of several examples of inconsistent testing results. By contrast, she says that Snopes concluded that "there isn’t an unsafe level of Lead in vintage Pyrex," which the article does not say, wherein she is also cited as one of several conflicting test results. She also gets at least one basic fact wrong (she says the articles were written by "Four different people;" in fact, Dan Evon is the credited writer on two of them).

Then she writes her response to Dan MacGuill, a lengthy screed in which she demands that they retract the errors in the 2016 post (linking repeatedly to her own earlier response to that post, wherein she asserts her test results as incontrovertible fact and refers to the author, repeatedly and dismissively, as "Snopes lady") and the 2019 post (which she does not elucidate, other than to say that the legal issues brought up in that post were dismissed and debunked).

And I gotta say, those red flags I noticed earlier? Turns out I have a pretty decent sense for this stuff.

Rubin starts her response to MacGuill by calling herself "someone who has a sincere regard for, and commitment to the scientific method," but this is not the response of that kind of person. Someone who has a sincere regard for and commitment to the scientific method would not pen a 4300-word response to a basic request for details on a particular source of evidence with the general message of "how dare you question my findings?!" Questioning findings is the scientific method. Every test has a false positive rate. Every study is prone to errors. Scientists cannot accept any conclusion based on a single study; the results have to be reliably replicated. And when different researchers arrive at different results, or when different lines of evidence lead to conflicting conclusions, it doesn't actually matter which researcher has appeared on the Today Show. What matters is the actual evidence and methodology.

Snopes is not a perfect outlet; I think they have made mistakes, I think their writers sometimes have ideological blind spots and they sometimes bend over too far in one direction or another because of various biases. But In these instances, it's hard to see where they've gone wrong, and certainly it's hard to see them going anywhere near wrong enough to warrant the kind of response Rubin sent regarding a very basic, reasonable request.

Because, here's the thing: if you're going to claim that Corelle themselves are telling consumers to use their pre-2005 pieces as decorative, as Rubin does in her original post, then you're opening yourself up to other sources who provide equivalent counter-evidence, like Michael Hardy, who shares a Facebook message from Corelle saying that their recent testing found that the dishes are safe for food use. This follows previous reporting where Corelle released a statement that they would be doing additional testing on their vintage items in response to a post by New Hampshire Public Health Services. Is the message Hardy shared legitimate? Is that person authorized to speak on behalf of Corelle? We have no way of knowing, because his response to inquiry was ultimately the same as Rubin's: "I don’t have to prove a thing."

Rubin is willing to accept Corelle's statements when they fit her narrative (she characterizes Monica's e-mail as the company "responsibly acknowledg[ing] the presence of Lead in their vintage products as a legitimate potential concern") and dismiss them when they don't (in her letter to MacGuill, she characterizes another Corelle e-mail as "CYA 'Grade A' bullshit"). This is transparent motivated reasoning, precisely the kind of cognitive bias that the scientific method is designed to help us avoid, and it is all over Rubin's posts.

Rubin's hostility toward being questioned, her expectation that her findings be treated as incontrovertible fact absent any replication or peer review process, and her belief in her own apparently infallible expertise, are not hallmarks of someone who is engaging in science. At best, they're hallmarks of zealous activism; at worst, hallmarks of a guru or a grifter.

And the worst part of all this is that, in all likelihood, it would probably be a good idea not to eat off of those vintage Corelle plates. Even if we take the message from Corelle to Michael Hardy as an official statement, at best they say that the lead they used in decorations was "encapsulated in glass" which "intentionally decreases the extent of any lead migration to food." Decreases, not eliminates, and who knows how effective that encapsulation process remains if the dish is scratched or scuffed or abraded or chipped in any way. I've had Corelle dishes that had cracks all the way across and were still intact for years; how safe would those be to eat off of even ignoring the possibility of lead or other heavy metals in the paint?

From the moment I saw the post about lead in the Corelle plates, I wanted to believe it. That 14,000 ppm butterfly gold pattern? I grew up with those. I'm pretty sure I still had some of those in my own home up until a few years ago. My first instinct when this came across my feed was to show it to my wife, who grew up with similar dishes.

My second instinct was to dig deeper, and I'm glad I did, even though it's led me to a place where, ultimately, I don't feel like I have a solid answer. Confirmation bias leads us to drop our guards when it comes to claims that fit with our preexisting worldviews, and this one fits in a whole bunch of people's worldviews—that corporations are greedy and will put profits ahead of safety, that toxic chemicals are and have been used in a variety of household goods, that previous generations were habitually lead-poisoned, that we don't know what dangerous chemicals are in the items we use on a regular basis, that Internet sleuths are out there doing the research that no one else will do. But those are the claims where we need to be especially vigilant, because they're designed to slip under our defenses and enter our belief systems without proper support.

The claim that these dishes contain potentially toxic amounts of lead is entirely plausible. The claim that they may be dangerous to eat off of is also plausible. But neither claim is supported by anything resembling sufficient, high-quality evidence. They are, at best, supported by at-home tests conducted by one activist who has a vested interest in getting attention directed toward her issue, no relevant expertise on the topic, and an open hostility toward anyone raising doubts about her conclusions. You should take her claims with an extremely large grain of salt.

You should also take the claims of Corelle, and their parent company, with a large grain of salt, because they have a vested interest in avoiding liability for any damage that might be caused by old products. You should take the claims of antiquers with a large grain of salt, because they have a sunk cost fallacy driving them to defend their purchases and their usage over decades. You should take the claims of random Tumblr users with large grains of salt because people will just say random shit on here without checking it out at all, based on half-remembered articles or posts they might have seen across the feed at some point.

The lesson I've had to take away from all this is that it should not be this hard to find good information on a topic like this. But the top 10 Google results for "corelle lead" include:

Corelle's FAQ page, which addresses lead twice. The first is in a statement functionally identical to the one made to Michael Hardy on Facebook, the second addressing lead in (modern) Pyrex dishes. The drop-down interface of the site refused to work for me on three different browsers and two devices, so I had to inspect the source to read the statements.

The Click2Houston news article I shared earlier about Corelle responding to a viral post on Instagram, and a WCNC article about the same story.

A blog post from TheGoodLifeDesigns that just repeats claims made by Hardy and Rubin, then drops several Amazon affiliate links for modern lead-free Corelle dishes.

The Michael Hardy post linked above

A Reddit r/Pyrex_Love thread about being tired of the lead posts; Michael Hardy is in the comments.

The Lead Safe Mama post that started this debacle

A Lead Safe Mama Facebook post

A Taste of Home article that just summarizes the Lead Safe Mama post

A 2Peas Refugees forum thread discussing the Corelle lead danger

The only thing approaching an independent source are the two news articles, neither of which seem to have followed up on the issue since May 2022. A number of intersecting factors—the slow death of journalism through media consolidation and the collapse of subscriptions and ad revenue as viable sources of funding, the monetized rot of search engines due to SEO gaming and algorithms that prioritize profit over reliability, the erosion of trust in institutions driven by blatant corruption and politicization, and the rise of an anti-intellectual attitude across culture that demonizes expertise and discourages critical thinking, valuing loudness on par with evidence—have led us to a point where it is becoming impossible to find reliable answers to basic questions, and that's before we discuss the problem of AI-generated slop.

The Internet was supposed to be the Information Superhighway and now it's just a traffic jam full of autopiot Teslas and assholes who think the rules of the road don't apply to them. And it's on par to get a lot worse before it gets better.