My dishes!

Recently, our local television consumer advocate broke a story about how much lead is acceptable in our dishes. You can click here to see the original story. I was obviously concerned, given I have several small children, all of whom I would prefer to remain unleaded.

The response was so great for the story that they arranged for people to do free testing on their dishes at the news station. Anything under 1 is "ok", and according to the experts at the station today, anything over that is "hot". The FDA says anything under 2 is ok.

I told my mom and grandma, and we spent two hours in line, waiting for our dishes to be tested. My grandma brought her brand new dishes that she'd dreamed of owning for 50+ years. Hers were great. She brought in my uncle's family dishes. They came in at 5!!! I brought my Japanese dishes and my Christmas dishes. My Christmas dishes came in at .5. My mom brought her regular dishes, her Christmas dishes, and my sister's dishes. All came within acceptable ranges except her Christmas dishes, which were at 1.7. My Japanese dishes came in at 1.2. So. quandary time. I'm leaning towards destroying them since I'd rather err on the side of caution. But I like my dishes. And we spent quite a bit of money on them. My husband has offered to shoot them for fun.

We took our kids into the clinic and had the older three tested for lead exposure to be on the safe side. Since we live in an older house, this seemed like a good idea, dishes notwithstanding. All three were very brave. I was especially proud of S, since they really had to dig around to get enough blood, and being two, she really didn't understand what was going on. She didn't even cry.

For those reading this who are in my neck of the woods, they'll be doing another free dish check on Tuesday Nov. 20 at the Salt Lake County south building, located at 2100 s. State.