So, is the answer yes, or no ?

[Clarence Martin]

Sent an email off to the company that makes the old crock pot slow cooker that I have. Having read about lead in different brands of slow cookers and wanting to know if my old one has it , I thought that an answer from the Company would say yes or no.

This what they replied with...

Thank you for contacting Crock-Pot, a brand of Jarden Consumer Solutions. We will be more than happy to assist you.

Jarden Consumer Solutions (JCS), the distributor of Rival, is very focused on the materials that are used in the manufacture of our products. We go to great lengths to ensure that our products meet or exceed all applicable laws and regulations as well as industry standards, such as the FDA regulations. JCS has not had any recalls for lead and we are being very diligent in our efforts to ensure our products are compliant with applicable regulations regarding the presence of lead.

Again, I apologize for any inconvenience. We appreciate your business and are happy to help if you have any further questions.
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So, is the answer yes, it does contain Lead, or no, it does not ?

[Jim Koepke]

Sometimes it is my opinion we are reliving the times of the tower of Babble.

My question on the pot in question would be about where it was made. Products normally used for food service do not have my trust if their origin is China. There is just too much bad press about plant managers having so much pressure to meet quotas using unapproved products to achieve their goals.

Not sure if a lead testing kit would be of any use.

jtk

[Clarence Martin]

Made in China. Now, from what I have read , they test for the presence of Lead when the container is cold. But when heated up, some Crock Pots will test positive for leaching of Lead

[Jim Matthews]

Not sure if a lead testing kit would be of any use.

jtk

Couldn't hurt.

[Bruce Page]

They went to a lot of trouble not to give you a yes or no. I would be worried. :rolleyes:

[Frederick Skelly]

I think all that lawyer speak means "We dont know of any lead in our product AT THIS TIME."
Fred

[Pat Barry]

Yes it has lead, yes it meets requirements (at least it did when it was made). Worried? Send it to the dump.

[Grant Wilkinson]

You could always offer to send it to the person who replied and ask if he/she would eat anything cooked in it.

[Judson Green]

Isn't there an acceptable amount of lead? IIRC, most brass faucet fixtures still have the lead in them, even the new ones.

[Matt Day]

Sounds like a politician answered your question.

[David Bassett]

I read that to say your pot isn't supposed to have lead, no one has found any lead, but they don't want to be sued if someone at the factory got "creative"* the day your pot was made.

* I used to work for a company that found lead in the plastic cover of a prototype. The factory had either used contaminated mixing equipment (the mold was ours) or had slipped a little lead into the mix (because it helps the plastic flow into the corners of the mold.) (PS- I'm sure it never happened on production parts, though I'm not sure if that vendor ever got to make any production parts.)

[Myk Rian]

sometimes it is my opinion we are reliving the times of the tower of babble on.
...fify...

[Brian Elfert]

For legal reasons they probably don't want to absolutely say no even though they believe the item to be lead free. If they emailed you and said no lead and you found out years later it had lead you could sue and be more likely to win based on them stating it had no lead.

[Jason Roehl]

For legal reasons they probably don't want to absolutely say no even though they believe the item to be lead free. If they emailed you and said no lead and you found out years later it had lead you could sue and be more likely to win based on them stating it had no lead.

I read once where California lead the way on this when it came to food labeling of allergens. To cover their rears from lawsuits, food production companies doing business in California would print "may contain milk, peanuts, etc.," on the label, even if there was no chance of those ingredients being present. This made it hard for those allergic to such things to find safe foods to eat.

But, hey, let's all stay on that speeding train of ever more expensive diminishing returns when it comes to our safety...

[Rich Enders]

* I used to work for a company that found lead in the plastic cover of a prototype. The factory had either used contaminated mixing equipment (the mold was ours) or had slipped a little lead into the mix (because it helps the plastic flow into the corners of the mold.) (PS- I'm sure it never happened on production parts, though I'm not sure if that vendor ever got to make any production parts.)[/QUOTE]


"Lead" There is lead the tri-valent metal as used in solder, but also many lead compounds such as oxides, phosphites, sulfites, stearates etc. All of these are referred to as "Lead" and will test as lead. They all have differing levels of acceptablity in manufacturing and commerce. Some are not allowed at all. Some are unrestricted, and most are permitted at a certain percentage. Lead compounds are still in use as a thermal stabilizer and an acid scavenger in wire insulation. In the business of copper reclaiming the insulation is also reclaimed, and thus it is readily available to be processed into other plastic applications. This may have been the source of the "Lead" in your prototype molding.

Although asking if something contains lead seems simple enough, in fact it is a bit complex.

[John Stankus]

The other problem with saying there is no lead in something, is that what is meant by no lead. In analytical chemistry, we will say something like there is lead was below the detection limits of the method. Now that does sound legalistic, but it is really stating the fact that we were not able to measure any lead down to a particular concentration, so if there is lead it is below the concentration we can detect.

Up in the lab we have an instrument (Varian 820 ICP-MS) that will detect a lot of metals to better than parts per billion (ppb). I just checked the spec sheet and it should typically detect lead to 0.1 ng/L which is better than what I recall. That is 0.0001 ppb or one part in 10,000,000,000,000.(Hopefully I have the zeros right ... I always lose a few at the whiteboard teaching class :( )

What is an acceptable amount of lead? We have exposure in many places. The WHO (World Health Organization) has a limit for drinking water of 10 micrograms/Liter (or 10,000 ng/L to put it in the same units as the detection limits) , and the EU statutory limit is 50 micrograms/Liter. The same reference I found indicated that blood levels of lead in Europeans had fallen below 10 micrograms/deciliter in the 1990s. (that is 100 micrograms/L or 100,000 ng/L).

Point is: We can detect lead at a much lower level than would be biologically significant. So a company will state that they comply with the lead regulations, but will probably never say there is no lead in something. (or they may say there is no detectable lead, but run the risk of a crafty chemist figuring out how to improve the detection limits:))

John

[Moses Yoder]

That is legal speak for yes it has lead. If it didn't have lead, they would have said no, there is no lead in our product. The question is whether the lead is harmful or not; according to their reply the product meets legal requirements for lead testing.

When I was growing up we used to make our own fishing weights, played with lead all the time.