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On 30 November 2016, the Facebook page Punk Rock Homesteading shared a report that vintage Pyrex dishes contain unsafe levels of lead. The linked article was published by Creative Green Living in October 2015, and strongly discouraged the use of vintage Pyrex due to a purported issue with high lead content. (Pyrex had previously been the subject of rumors about spontaneous shattering thanks to manufacturing cuts.) The piece reported that lead could contaminate food from both in and outside the popular dishes (often heirlooms), citing a documentary about a secret epidemic of lead in household items: The author lamented that she could not in good conscience tell readers their vintage Pyrex was still safe to use, listing off the myriad ways in which lead could purportedly come into contact with food, and implying that vintage Pyrex differs from its modern counterpart: The source of most social media claims appeared to be the Tamara Rubin documentary about childhood lead poisoning. In a 19 June 2014 Facebook post, the documentary's page shared purported lead testing results for a Pyrex casserole from the Spring Blossom collection. The post had no information about testing methodology: Rubin's claims about lurking lead dangers did not revolve solely around Pyrex. In an April 2015 interview, Rubin shared more stories about lead lurking in innocuous items: The claims appeared to originate with a single individual (Rubin) testing vintage Pyrex for lead in a non-laboratory environment and using undisclosed methods. Other people attempted to test their own pieces; one owner of vintage Pyrex in the Butterprint pattern discovered different results: A search for definitive answers about lead in vintage Pyrex originating from any source other from Rubin was difficult. A since-deleted page created by Pyrex provided a clue as to whether older Pyrex presented a new risk. According to the archived FAQ: A representative for Pyrex confirmed to us that their manufacturing standards had not changed in the preceding six decades, suggesting that if high levels of lead were present in vintage Pyrex, there was no reason why they would not also be present in modern Pyrex. (However, panics over lead in Pyrex targeted only the prized vintage patterns.) Another answer came from a Smithsonian piece on the safety of vintage wares in general, in which a Food and Drug Administration representative was quoted on the general safety of such items: The Facebook post embedded above specifically tested a casserole from Pyrex's Spring Blossom (or Spring Blossom Green) collection, introduced in 1972. All dishes of that vintage Pyrex pattern were manufactured after the FDA's enforcement of leachable lead levels for cookware in 1971. The Butterprint pattern tested in the video above was manufactured between 1957 and 1968, but Pyrex did not appear to have changed their product composition in that timeframe. We could find no evidence in Pyrex's well-documented history that the FDA's updated standards for lead in cookware altered the standing composition or manufacture of the product in any way. A 2010 paper on the history of Pyrex acknowledged the presence of lead in a predecessor known as Nonex, adding that lead was formulated out during the development of Pyrex between 1913 and 1915: We were unable to locate any other information substantiating the claim that vintage Pyrex contained any worrisome levels of lead. All information we could find indicated that the method of production has stayed consistent for 60 years. The FDA began enforcing limits on leachable lead in 1971, and a vintage Pyrex pattern commonly targeted as purportedly high in lead content didn't even go into production until 1972, after all manufacturers were subject to the FDA's new leachable lead standards.
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