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Kris G.
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2025
Useless for metals, reacts to pure copper.
Stephanie
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2025
I worry about lead, especially when I buy furniture to redo. I had a cool antique cabinet from my husband's grandmother and it was all lead so we had to get rid of it, but the lead test I bought at a big box store was expensive and contained 1 test. This bag has 30 test swabs, which is an amazing deal. I used them on a few items I suspected contained lead but they were negative. I will continue testing them on products to see if any contain lead and if it's positive, I will update with more results.
Sarah
Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2025
These swabs are a great item to have on hand, especially when ordering products online to know what might be going into your dishes and other items around your home. The bag was difficult to open - the resealable portion didn't want to open for me to the point that I thought maybe it wasn't resealable after all. I had to cut it open below that point and now I'll have to store these in another bag for storage.The instructions provided on the back are a bit confusing as they refer to an included chart to refer to, which is actually the front of the bag itself. Clever, but not super clear. The swabs are cheap and about the width of a matchstick. The directions say to wet them with bottled water, but we don't have any so I am hoping that using filtered water works well enough.At a minimum, these are worth having on hand for some peace of mind and first line of testing for anything questionable.
hubflubalub
Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2025
30 test swabs for five bucks is a great deal. . . if they work. Since that's probably what you're wondering, I'll cut to the chase and confirm they do—and pretty well, at that! My initial tests were done on some leaded electrical solder, a mug that is marked as being made of stainless steel, and an old engine valve from a mid-80s engine.The results were exactly what I'd expected of working test swabs: strong purple on the solder swab, light orange to whitish on the stainless steel swab, and a light purple for the swab that tested the valve stem.Given that these seem to give accurate results for testing for a general presence of lead (the package specifies the detection level of 2mg/cm²), I'd recommend anyone grab a pack of these. If you have kids, pets, friends who compulsively put objects laying around the house in their mouth, an irrational phobia of lead, go ahead and buy these to avoid catastrophe. Likewise, if you live in an older building, handle scrap, buy stuff from garage sales and second hand shops, chew on things you find on the ground, or just like rubbing damp swabs on things. Really, there's no good reason to not have a pack of these in a stuff drawer or medicine cabinet.All that said, I think there's a few very small revisions that would massively improve the already high quality of the product:1) Provide a little more info and consistency in the instructions. In specific, in the steps printed on the back of the package, step 3 instructs the user to, "Compare the swab's color to the provided chart," and the corresponding illustration depicts a swab held up to a graduated linear chart (similar to those used with pH testing strips), which tripped me up because there's no chart of that sort provided.2) Include a chart like in the image I described. Falling that, then3) Make it more clear that the color strips on the edges of the face of the package are meant to be used as the aforementioned "chart." This was unclear to the point that I had to pull up the Amazon product page and watch the video in the product gallery to confirm what was supposed to serve as the comparison chart.4) Far less important than 1-3, but would still be nice to know: specify if there's a test reagent development window. In other words, if the color the swab shows shouldn't be referenced because of you might get a false-positive after. . . Say 1 hour or more has passed since being used, then make a note of this. Maybe also mention an approximate timeframe as to when to expect the color of the swab to begin changing if lead is present.
mag
Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2025
Well am I glad I got these test swabs!I love vintage cast iron but have been aware that cast old cast iron pans were sometimes repurposed to smelt lead for homemade sinkers and the like so I've been holding off using a kettle I purchased at an antique store till I tested it I fully expected bad news but I was shocked no lead!!! That's where the good news ends. I also decided to test one of my favorite pans I've been using for over a year and due to its Design and manufacture I doubted had any lead in fact I made pizza with it just the other day! Unfortunately it tested positive for lead I was so sad but I'm really glad I know I was literally going to have a pizza party this coming up weekend using that very pan to feed half a dozen people! I think I'll be testing all my pans from here on our!
Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2025
First, if you are like me and searched the entire bag for the "provided chart", the chart IS the bag. Look on the front along the edges and you'll see it. It took me longer than I want to admit before I noticed that. Now that is out of the way, I tested on a known lead-free bottle and lead-based glass bottle and the test swabs agreed with the lead based glass results turning red (more pink to me) but noticeable enough to be sure. Since the testing of the test swabs was successful, we then tested some of the kids toys and did find one surprise result on an old painted metal truck. Guess it was much older than we thought and used lead based paint. Already worth it! Interesting note, on the pouch it says to wet the tip with bottled water. I'm guessing to minimize cross contamination, we used distilled since we had it handy and it shouldn't have anything extra in it. I like that the pouch is resealable, though I don't know if these can really dry out if they need to be moistened before use, either way it keeps them all together and easy to store.
Blooper
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2025
These actually work...I wasn't expecting much due to the low price (although I've never bought lead test swabs before so I'm not sure what the typical cost is). I tested some of the kid toys and furniture...I was surprised to find out some of those items tested positive for lead. Other items tested negative fortunately. I did another test to doublecheck and the results were the same. If these are actually accurate, then I think these are great to keep around for when you purchase new items and want to test them. I plan to order more to give as gifts for friends/family who have young kids so they can test their toys.
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