You might need heard of the Stanley tumbler, the hip, fashionable water bottle that has individuals tenting exterior shops or moving into fights to get their palms on one.
They’ve change into a trend accent, particularly for the reason that firm that makes the cups, Stanley 1913, has made use of influencer tradition to goal women and make the tumbler’s gross sales skyrocket. The attain of the bottles has been amplified by social media customers.
But social media giveth and social media taketh away. In latest weeks, a number of broadly shared posts on TikTok, Instagram, Reddit and X have amplified issues Stanley cups might comprise lead, with one X consumer calling it “The Leadening.” YouTubers have additionally jumped into the fray. One TikTok video on the subject was seen nearly seven million times.
Some Stanley house owners, hoping to test the claims, started to use home lead-testing kits, which specialists say will not be dependable. A sendup of the Stanley cup phenomenon on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend — a sketch known as “Big Dumb Cups” — even talked about the lead in passing.
The lead dialogue has popped up on Facebook comment sections, as in a single group with greater than 61,0000 members known as “Stanley Cup Hunters + Drops” — for “passionate Stanley Cup fanatics.”
One person wrote, “If we want to dress up our lead cups with a flower straw cover and a glitter boot and show them off, lets us be!! We know they have lead, you have told us. We don’t care!”
So you may be questioning: Do I’ve to throw my Stanley cup into the hearth? (No. In reality, don’t throw something into your fire.) We have some solutions for these of you who really need to sustain with the occasions and drink water fashionably.
Do Stanley cups comprise lead?
Yes, in accordance to the company’s website. It says that its “vacuum insulation technology,” which retains the cup’s contents at a super temperature, makes use of “an industry standard pellet to seal the vacuum insulation at the base of our products.” The sealing materials, it says, “includes some lead.”
Once the bottle is sealed, Stanley stated, the world is roofed with a layer of chrome steel, which the corporate says makes the lead “inaccessible to consumers.”
But is it harmful?
No. Almost assuredly, no.
Jack Caravanos, a professor of public health at New York University who research lead, examined three Stanley cup fashions of various sizes on Monday utilizing an X-ray fluorescence detector, which determines the weather of a fabric.
“There’s a lot of places where lead can be on a cup like that,” Dr. Caravanos stated. “It could be on the inside, the outside, the labels, decals. And, I did not find lead — sort of superficial lead on the surface — in any part of the cup.”
“I’m a global exposure expert,” he added. “I’ve completed a variety of work in several merchandise and international locations. And the risk to human health is absolutely negligible since you’re not going to actually put your mouth anyplace close to that floor, and it’s not going to readily dissolve into something that may get into you.”
But what concerning the space beneath the chrome steel?
For that, Dr. Caravanos stated he would have to deconstruct the cup itself — not at all a simple job.
“I tried repeatedly to pry open the bottom cap with various tools and failed,” he stated. “Perhaps the lead is being used to seal the cap closed. In any case, it should further assure the public that lead material is very unlikely to ever be released from the cup and be made available for ingestion.”
Dr. Caravanos stated that at-home lead exams in the marketplace right this moment will not be thought-about dependable — and none of them out there right this moment are accepted by the Environmental Protection Agency. Though on Tuesday morning, Dr. Caravanos tried an at-home check on a pitcher and nonetheless didn’t get a constructive check.
So we’re all good, proper?
That the cups use any kind of lead to start with confirmed “poor thinking” on the a part of the corporate, Dr. Caravanos stated.
“I’m actually disheartened and kind of indignant that an organization like this makes use of a recognized poisonous ingredient that’s banned in lots of purposes for a cup,” he stated. “I mean, surely there could have been an alternative.”
A Stanley consultant referred to the reason on the corporate’s web site describing the usage of lead within the cups. But in a statement to NBC News, a consultant stated, “Our engineering and supply chain teams are making progress on innovative, alternative materials for use in the sealing process.”
Lead, which is regulated by the federal government, continues to be prevalent within the United States, significantly in paint, cookware and water that travels via lead pipes.
“There are many health effects associated with lead exposure, such as reproductive toxicity, cardiovascular disease,” stated Maria Jose Talayero, a public health researcher at George Washington University. “And the one that I study the most is the damage to the nervous system, which results in a variety of neurological effects.”
She added, “But it’s a fact that other cups and other manufacturers do not use lead, so why have it in there in the first place?”
