Lead in Wineglasses: Safe? Yup, Pretty Much.
It’s going to be wine-glass week here at Dear Dara. So, what about lead in leaded crystal? Is it dangerous? Basically, no. The science on this seems to have been settled twenty years ago, and runs something like this: Wine leaches a miniscule, but detectable, amount of lead from a lead crystal wine-glass. There’s no meaningful amount of lead you can get from using a wine-glass during dinner. This 1991 article in the NY Times is a good summary, and here’s the money quote:
“Dr. Graziano said that crystal glasses posed “a negligible risk” because the amount leached was tiny, but that long-term storage in decanters could be a problem.”
So, don’t store port, brandy, wine or anything in lead-glass crystal for a long time. I was at a B&B in New Orleans once where they had a sideboard decanter ever-filled with Port, now I see that that was probably something bad to drink from. If you want to err on the side of utter caution you could avoid leaded crystal altogether, and if you feel paranoid this report from Canada Health will give you more background, but there’s lead in the ground, lead in the ocean water, lead in city water pipes, I think it’s one of those things where a sensible course is to figure that everything’s okay, unless otherwise specified.
Now, how do you know if your wine glasses have lead in them? If they’re very, very expensive and trumpeted the fact that they contained lead as a benefit on the packaging (leaded crystal is the prettiest). Or, if they’re very, very old and were once expensive, for instance if you inherited them or found them at an estate sale. Today only the most expensive wine-glasses contain lead, if you’re paying $2 or $12 for a new glass you can safely assume you are not drinking from anything with lead. My advice: Enjoy your leaded crystal if you’re lucky enough to have some!
