Which toothpaste brands tested highest for lead and arsenic in Lead Safe Mama’s 2025 testing and what were the measured concentrations?
Executive summary
Lead Safe Mama’s 2025 community‑funded testing found widespread detections of heavy metals in toothpastes: about 90% of products tested positive for lead and roughly 65% for arsenic across the sample set, and the organization named several mainstream and specialty brands among those with detectable contamination [1] [2] [3]. Public reporting and Lead Safe Mama’s published materials identify brands with positive results (including Crest, Sensodyne, Tom’s of Maine, Dr. Bronner’s, Davids, and Dr. Jen) but the summaries available in mainstream coverage do not reliably publish a complete table of brand‑by‑brand ppb concentrations in the articles provided here, so precise ranked concentration values for every brand are available only in the underlying lab reports and comparative chart that Lead Safe Mama hosts [3] [4] [5].
1. What was tested and the headline prevalence of lead and arsenic
Lead Safe Mama coordinated independent, third‑party laboratory testing of dozens of toothpaste and tooth‑powder products in 2024–2025 and reported that, of roughly 51–53 products sampled, about 90% tested positive for lead and about 65% tested positive for arsenic, with many products also showing mercury or cadmium [1] [2] [6]. The organization says the work was community‑funded and that products were nominated by its readership for testing, and it has published a comparative chart and individual lab reports documenting the testing initiative [1] [4] [5].
2. Which brands were flagged most prominently by Lead Safe Mama
Mainstream coverage and Lead Safe Mama’s own reporting repeatedly cite a mix of large market brands and smaller “natural” brands among those with detectable levels: reporting names include Crest, Sensodyne, Tom’s of Maine, Dr. Bronner’s, Davids, Dr. Jen, and others as having tested positive for heavy metals in Lead Safe Mama’s dataset [3] [6]. Lead Safe Mama published individual posts calling out specific products—for example, Hello Brand’s Dragon Dazzle children’s toothpaste was reported to contain “unsafe levels” of lead and mercury in its post, and a dedicated post discussed Crest Regular toothpaste testing positive for lead, arsenic, and mercury [7] [8]. These brand mentions indicate which products had measurable detections, though the public narrative has emphasized prevalence over a neat ranked list of concentrations [3] [8].
3. Measured concentrations: what reporting discloses (and what it doesn’t)
Lead Safe Mama’s public materials include a comparative chart and individual lab reports that are the primary sources for exact parts‑per‑billion (ppb) measurements, but the mainstream summaries in The Guardian, Fortune, Real Simple and other outlets emphasize counts and proportion positives rather than reproducing every brand’s numerical ppb values in their articles [3] [2] [6] [4]. One specific quantitative disclosure in the reporting is that two common toothpaste ingredients—hydroxyapatite and calcium carbonate—were independently tested and found to contain over 200 ppb lead (and detectable arsenic), a finding Lead Safe Mama highlights as a plausible contamination source [6]. Beyond that ingredient‑level note, the articles and excerpted posts reviewed here do not list a complete, easily quotable ranking of which single toothpaste had the absolute highest ppb of lead or arsenic; readers and researchers are directed to consult Lead Safe Mama’s PDF chart and the lab reports for product‑level ppb values [4] [5].
4. Context, caveats and how to confirm brand‑level concentrations
The testing sample was driven by community nominations and crowd‑funding, not a randomized market survey, which affects how broadly the results can be generalized, and Lead Safe Mama provides the raw lab reports and a comparative chart for transparency [1] [5]. Regulatory limits vary—Lead Safe Mama and some coverage emphasize that federal rules permit surprisingly high lead levels in certain toothpaste categories, even while public‑health authorities say no lead level is safe for children—and stories note that some detections fall below legal thresholds while remaining matters of public‑health concern [7] [6]. For precise answers to “which toothpaste brand tested highest for lead and arsenic and what were the measured concentrations,” consult Lead Safe Mama’s product‑level lab reports and the Comparative Chart PDF (Lead Safe Mama’s Lab Reports landing page and chart) because those documents contain the ppb measurements not reproduced in full in the news summaries cited here [4] [5].