I took one of my everyday dishes to the testing site and brought along one of Mom's dishes that she and our family used every day for half a century. Hers was Franciscanware, a high-quality, everyday china that millions of housewives of the 1950s treasured for their families. The patterns each family had were expressions of mothers' favorite colors and themes.
When I had the china tested, I expected that my everyday china that I had bought on sale at Marshall's would test high and I would toss it. Lead is never good.
I also expected that the Franciscanware would be deemed safe. What a surprise I got. Yes, my inexpensive everyday china tested high, but the Franciscanware tested even higher. Yikes. Lead is never good, and if you've ever seen ALS, you have no desire to take any potential chances with any substance that can possibly mess with your neurons.
On a recent webinar on possible causes of ALS, I asked if anyone had ever studied the lead content of the dishes that people with ALS had used. I didn't get a direct reply to my question. The scientist just said, "Lead is never good."
ALS is a fatal mystery disease, yet we have no nimble systems for gathering and reporting on possible risk factors or causative factors. The studies take years and the information-gathering nets are not cast widely (quite possible because the studies take years and the disease often kills people quickly).
We need nimble. We need complete and organized information. This is not rocket science. We need ways to gather and harvest information quickly. What if there are some simple preventive measures we can take in our everyday lives? This is a matter of life and death.
Lead is never good. In the meantime, I've tossed all the dishes. I've seen ALS and it is never good, either.
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