Which toothpaste brands have been independently shown to have non-detectable lead levels?
Executive summary
Lead Safe Mama (LSM), an independent, community-funded testing operation run by Tamara Rubin, reports that a small subset of toothpastes it sent to third‑party labs came back with “non‑detect” results for lead; however, the publicly available reporting included in this packet names only one specific product — Brown’s Baby Toothpaste — as having no detectable heavy metals, while LSM’s own pages state five-to-seven products have returned non‑detect results without listing all names in the excerpts provided here [1] [2] [3]. The overall body of testing, across 51 brands in LSM’s campaign, found the vast majority of products contained detectable lead, so the non‑detect list is small and not fully disclosed in the supplied sources [4] [5] [6].
1. What the independent testing project actually found
Lead Safe Mama’s community‑funded initiative crowdfunded laboratory analysis of toothpastes and tooth powders and reports that most products tested contained lead and other metals — roughly 90% of 51 products had detectable lead according to LSM’s reporting summarized in multiple outlets [4] [5] [6]. LSM’s public materials and articles state that a handful of products—five according to some posts, seven in other summaries—have returned “non‑detect” (N/D) results for lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic in independent third‑party lab reports [2] [3]. Those N/D results are presented by LSM as verified by laboratory detection limits noted on the reports [3].
2. Which toothpaste brands are documented as non‑detect
Among the sourced reporting in this packet, Brown’s Baby Toothpaste is explicitly described as “one of the few brands that showed no detectable levels of heavy metals” in an article summarizing testing results [1]. LSM’s own posts assert five to seven toothpastes tested N/D for lead on its independent lab reports, and LSM lists those products in its full online charts and blog posts; however, the specific names beyond Brown’s Baby are not fully visible in the excerpts supplied here, so this summary cannot reproduce a comprehensive named list from the provided documents [2] [3]. Other product pages on LSM’s site referenced specific tests (for example, Boka and Radius) but in those cases the supplied excerpts indicate detectable metals rather than N/D [2] [7].
3. How to interpret “non‑detect” and the scope of the evidence
“Non‑detect” in the cited LSM laboratory reports means the analyte concentration was below the laboratory’s stated limit of detection for that metal; LSM emphasizes that each lab report shows low thresholds of detection and that N/D is reported relative to those limits [3]. Independent media coverage stresses that most products did show detectable lead and that some exceeded state thresholds (Washington) even if they did not exceed federal FDA limits, underscoring that absence of detection in a given test does not prove a product is universally free of contamination across all lots or manufacturing runs [5] [6] [8]. The supplied scientific review of toothpaste heavy‑metal testing elsewhere also shows wide variation in past studies and detection methods, signaling that comparability depends on lab methods and limits of detection [9].
4. Caveats, potential biases and what remains unknown
The available reporting comes largely from Lead Safe Mama, an advocacy and testing organization whose founder has a clear public mission to identify lead sources and whose crowd‑funded model has driven recalls and public attention; that advocacy orientation is material context when weighing findings and data transparency [3] [5]. Major outlets that covered LSM’s work reiterate the high prevalence of detectable metals and note that a small number of products tested N/D, but the specific non‑detect brand list is not fully reproduced in the provided snippets beyond Brown’s Baby [4] [6]. There is no independent corroborating dataset in the supplied documents listing all N/D brands, and federal regulatory thresholds differ greatly from state limits and from public‑health perspectives that assert no safe lead level [8] [1].
5. Bottom line
Based on the supplied sources, Brown’s Baby Toothpaste is explicitly documented as having no detectable heavy metals in the independent testing cited here [1], and Lead Safe Mama reports five-to-seven toothpastes overall with non‑detect results on third‑party lab reports [2] [3]. The rest of the marketplace predominantly showed detectable lead in LSM’s campaign, and the full set of N/D brand names and raw lab reports should be consulted on LSM’s published chart and product pages for definitive identification beyond what is excerpted here [3] [2].