If you're still using the ornate ceramic cutlery and crockery that first adorned your family dining table, maybe it's time to let go. Recent research has turned the spotlight back on ceramics as a source of lead contamination, a hot topic in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s.
An investigation by Health Post found some ceramics from shops around town that tested positive for surface lead.
Our 40 test samples - dishes, bowls, cups and utensils - were all ceramics intended for food use and made in China. They were acquired from both high-end and discount houseware stores, private households, cookware retailers, restaurants, and ceramics shops that target tourist trade. Only one shop in SoHo warns customers, in a tiny notice, 'Not for food use. Glaze contains lead.'
Using store-bought LeadCheck swabs from the United States, we found six items with high concentrations of surface lead. Almost all had gaudy Oriental patterns similar to the toxic ceramics seized by Hong Kong authorities in the 1990s. Four were ornately enamelled flat-bottomed spoons, and the other two - a mug and a soy dish - had traditional pink-and-yellow Chinese porcelain schemes. Two other bowls and a teacup had lead on the external lip. Traces of lead were detected on a dish and a spoon, but at much lower levels of concentration.
Certainly, this ad hoc test lacked the scientific protocols that would deem our findings conclusive, but it does suggest that extra care should be taken when selecting dinnerware and cutlery. More conclusive results on how much lead is actually leaching into food would require laboratory analysis.
Our tests were conducted after speaking to Dr Gerald O'Malley, a physician in emergency medicine and director of clinical research at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, in the United States. This year laboratory tests found that about one in four ceramics bought in Philadelphia's Chinatown - all imported from China - were lead-positive, with levels of leaching up to eight times the permissible level.
Lead has long been used in ceramic ware, as a glaze to give a glass-like finish that allows bright colours and decorative patterns to show through, and as a decoration to bring out rich or intense colours.