Lead shows up in a surprisingly wide range of everyday items, from the paint on older walls to the spices in your kitchen cabinet. Some sources are well known, like old house paint. Others, like imported ceramics or traditional cosmetics, catch people off guard. Here’s a practical breakdown of where lead hides and what to watch for.
Paint in Homes Built Before 1978
Lead-based paint is the single most recognized source of lead exposure in the United States. It was banned for residential use in 1978, but roughly 29 million housing units still contain lead-based paint hazards, including deteriorating paint and lead-contaminated dust. If your home was built before 1978, there’s a real chance lead paint is somewhere on the walls, trim, doors, or window frames.
The paint itself is only dangerous when it’s disturbed. Peeling, chipping, or flaking paint releases lead dust and chips that settle on floors, windowsills, and soil outside the house. Renovation work like sanding, scraping, or demolition can send enormous amounts of lead dust into the air. Young children are especially vulnerable because they spend time on floors and put their hands in their mouths.
You can test painted surfaces at home using EPA-recognized test kits. LeadCheck and D-Lead are both recognized for use on wood, metal, drywall, and plaster. The State of Massachusetts kit works on drywall and plaster but is not recognized for wood or metal surfaces. No amount of cleaning removes lead from paint, so if a test comes back positive, the goal is either professional removal or encapsulation to seal the paint in place.
Drinking Water Pipes and Fixtures
Lead doesn’t naturally occur in most water supplies. It gets into tap water by leaching from plumbing materials between the water main and your faucet. The most common culprits are lead service lines (the pipe connecting the city water main to your home), lead solder used to join copper pipes, and brass or bronze faucets and fittings.
Homes built before the mid-1980s are most likely to have lead solder in their plumbing. Lead service lines are common in older cities across the Midwest and Northeast. You typically can’t see these pipes without digging, but many water utilities are now required to build inventories of service line materials and can tell you what your line is made of. If you suspect lead plumbing, running cold water for 30 seconds to two minutes before drinking helps flush out water that has been sitting in contact with lead. Hot water dissolves more lead than cold, so always use cold water for cooking and drinking.
Imported Spices and Food Products
Ground cinnamon made headlines after the FDA found elevated lead levels in products from multiple distributors, with concentrations ranging from about 2 to 3.4 parts per million. That sounds alarming on its own, but a separate investigation into ground cinnamon from Ecuador traced to apple puree and applesauce products found lead levels between 2,270 and 5,110 ppm, hundreds of times higher than the other contaminated batches.
Cinnamon isn’t the only spice at risk. Turmeric, chili powder, and other ground spices imported from certain regions have been found with lead contamination, sometimes from lead-based pigments added to enhance color. The FDA monitors imports but only tests a subset of incoming products. Buying spices from established, regulated brands reduces your risk, though it doesn’t eliminate it entirely.
Ceramics and Traditional Cookware
Handmade pottery and traditional ceramics, particularly those from Mexico and other parts of Latin America, frequently use lead-based glazes. When the glaze is fired at the correct temperature for the right duration, most of the lead bonds into the glass-like coating and stays put. But if the pottery isn’t fired properly, lead leaches into whatever food or drink the dish holds. Acidic foods like tomato sauce, citrus, and vinegar pull even more lead out of the glaze.
The FDA has received reports of traditional pottery from Mexican manufacturers labeled “lead free” that actually contained lead levels comparable to known lead-glazed products, sometimes exceeding FDA action levels. There’s no way to wash, boil, or treat the pottery to remove the lead. If a piece looks handmade with a crude or irregular shape, treat it as decorative rather than functional. Home lead test kits designed for ceramics can help, but if you can’t test a piece or verify the manufacturer, the safest approach is to keep it out of the kitchen.
Children’s Toys and Jewelry
The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 dramatically lowered allowable lead levels in children’s products, which means toys manufactured before 2009 may contain significantly more lead than current products. Imported toys, antique or vintage toys, and inexpensive children’s jewelry are the most frequent offenders.
Jewelry made abroad is more likely to contain lead than jewelry labeled as domestically produced. Products purchased through informal or unregulated sources, like flea markets, online resellers, or overseas vendors, carry higher risk. Children absorb lead more readily than adults, and the danger with jewelry is direct: kids chew on necklaces, suck on charms, and occasionally swallow small pieces. If you have pre-2009 toys or costume jewelry of unknown origin, keep them away from young children.
Traditional Cosmetics and Eye Products
Kohl, kajal, surma, tiro, and kwalli are traditional eye cosmetics used across parts of South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. These products often contain extremely high concentrations of lead. Lead sulfide sometimes accounts for more than half the total weight of kohl products. One tiro product linked to lead poisoning in an infant was found to be 82.6% lead.
In some cultures, parents apply these products to infants’ eyes or paint a newborn’s umbilical stump with kohl powder. Infants born to mothers who use these products during pregnancy sometimes have elevated blood lead levels at birth. These cosmetics are not approved for sale in the U.S., but they’re commonly brought in from abroad or purchased in specialty shops. The lead content in these products is not trace contamination. It is a primary ingredient.
Hobby and Craft Materials
Several common hobbies involve direct contact with lead. Stained glass work uses lead came (the strips between glass pieces) and lead-based solder. Ammunition reloading, bullet casting, and making fishing sinkers all involve melting and handling lead directly. Each of these activities can produce lead dust and fumes that settle on hands, clothing, and work surfaces.
People who work with these materials often bring lead dust home on their clothes and skin without realizing it. Changing clothes after handling lead, washing hands thoroughly, and keeping hobby spaces separate from living areas all help limit exposure to other household members.
Soil Around Older Homes and Roads
Urban and suburban soil often contains lead from two major historical sources: leaded gasoline exhaust and exterior lead paint. Decades of vehicle emissions deposited lead along roadsides, and paint chips and dust from the exterior of older buildings settled into surrounding soil. Industrial sites and waste facilities can also elevate nearby soil lead levels.
The EPA defines a soil lead hazard as 400 ppm or higher in children’s play areas, or an average of 1,200 ppm across the rest of a residential yard. Depending on where you live, it’s common to find lead at or above these thresholds. Soil near the foundations of pre-1978 buildings and along busy older roads tends to have the highest concentrations. If you garden in urban soil, raised beds with imported clean soil are a simple workaround. Keeping bare soil covered with mulch or grass also reduces the chance of children ingesting contaminated dirt.
How Lead Exposure Is Measured
The CDC uses a blood lead reference value of 3.5 micrograms per deciliter to identify children with levels higher than most kids their age. This was lowered from 5.0 in 2021, reflecting an understanding that there is no truly safe level of lead in the blood. The reference value is based on the top 2.5% of blood lead levels in U.S. children ages one through five. A simple blood test at a pediatrician’s office is the only reliable way to know if a child has been exposed. For adults, occupational health screenings typically include blood lead testing for workers in construction, manufacturing, and other high-risk fields.