Lead content in brass mouthpieces?

[Reedman1]

Saw this on Facebook, posted by Giddings. Curious what other mouthpiece makers have to say about lead content in brass mouthpieces.

https://www.ceh.org/campaigns/legal-act ... 9HnsuiYIRA

[Posaunus]

Good grief!

Brass mouthpieces, which contain trace amounts of lead beneath their silver or gold plating, are considered "toxic" by these clowns? What about all the brass plumbing in just about every faucet and fixture in our homes? Are we all gonna die?

California's Proposition 65 is a joke that protects essentially no one from harm, but instead provides a vehicle for such organizations as CEH to cause a ruckus and create an income stream for themselves, much in the way that California's Environmental Quality Act is abused.

I expect that nickel - which some people are allergic to - is much more harmful to brass instrument players - than lead is. And stainless steel mouthpieces - which I like, by the way - contain "toxic" nickel!

[Doug Elliott]

It's not the first time Ivan has used fear mongering to try to promote his mouthpieces.

[Posaunus]

It's not the first time Ivan has used fear mongering to try to promote his mouthpieces.

Irresponsible - and disingenuous!

[LeTromboniste]

I play raw brass mouthpieces tested by their maker and containing between 2 and 5% lead, which apparently is standard for stock brass cylinders because it makes turning on a lathe easier. I wouldn't quite call that "trace" amount since it's a significant ratio of lead and it is introduced on purpose, and while I don't agree on a ban on them, I do think it's not unlikely to have some health impact on some people in the long term given the number of hours a day where it's in contact with our mouths. It's a risk I choose to accept.


I do think it would be nice if more people offered a lead free alternative. A maker I work with casts his own mouthpiece blanks by melting all his scrap brass tubing (which usually doesn't contain more than trace amounts of lead) and reportedly they turn even easier than industrial blanks, despite not having more than traces of it in them. So the possibility for instrument manufacturers to produce mouthpieces without lead is already there.

[BGuttman]

As a chemist, let me state:

1. Most mouthpieces are made from 342 brass, which has 1-2% lead to make it easier to machine.

2. Plating on the mouthpiece will very effectively prevent your body from contacting any brass.

3. You can't get lead unless you have some way to extract it from the mouthpiece. Saliva might allow the lead to be extracted from the mouthpiece, but its a VERY slow process and you'd need to suck on a brass mouthpiece all the time. You will taste this.

4. A plastic rim will eliminate all contact of your mouth with the brass and if you are really that squeamish look into a plastic rimmed mouthpiece.

[Posaunus]

Thanks, Bruce, for the clarifications.

I challenge anyone to demonstrate toxicity (or even to measure significant amounts of lead in the blood) in those who play on even unplated brass mouthpieces for hours every day. I believe it ain't gonna happen - and it's essentially impossible to ingest lead from a plated mouthpiece, which most of us play. CEH is engaged in faux fearmongering.

[Wakawaka555]

Hi,
Not that I’m buying in to the fear mongering, but has there ever been a study conducted among players that correlates cancer risks with players? I’d be curious tbh.

Ian

[Posaunus]

Hi,
Not that I’m buying in to the fear mongering, but has there ever been a study conducted among players that correlates cancer risks with players? I’d be curious tbh.

Ian

Ian,

What do you speculate might be correlated between trombone playing and cancer? Do you have a hypothesis to test?

In other words, do you really think there might be cancer risk factors associated with tromboning?

[Doug Elliott]

I suspect you would find that brass players and other musicians in general live longer and healthier lives than the general public.

[JohnL]

https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp13.pdf

Skin contact with dust and dirt containing lead occurs every day. Recent data have shown that inexpensive cosmetic jewelry pieces sold to the general public may contain high levels of lead which may be transferred to the
skin through routine handling. However, not much lead can get into your body through your skin.

Dust and soil that contain lead may get on your skin, but only a small portion of the lead will pass through your skin and enter your blood if it is not washed off. You can, however, accidentally swallow lead that is on your hands when you eat, drink, smoke, or apply cosmetics (for example, lip balm). More lead can pass through skin that has been damaged (for example, by scrapes, scratches, and wounds). The only kinds of lead compounds that easily penetrate the skin are the additives in leaded gasoline, which is no longer sold to the general public. Therefore, the general public is not likely to encounter lead that can enter through the skin.

[sirisobhakya]

What about students playing mouthpieces with plating loss?

[Doug Elliott]

See the previous post from JohnL

[Posaunus]

Some folks are sensitive to nickel (a component of stainless steel); some are sensitive to raw brass. (For them, these materials may cause irritation, redness, swelling, etc. to varying degrees.) If you're one of those folks, avoid those materials. Very few are sensitive to the silver or gold plating used on brass mouthpieces, or to polycarbonate (e.g., Lexan) or delrin or nylon or ABS plastics (used for some mouthpieces and mouthpiece rims). As JohnL points out, no one is going to ingest lead from a solid brass mouthpiece.

So if your mouthpiece bothers you, switch to a piece made with a different material. And don't obsess about lead in your brass. It ain't gonna kill you - much less harm you in any way. Enjoy playing your music with a clear conscience!

[BGuttman]

Lead poisoning is much more severe in small children. Mostly when they eat it or drink it in their water (a la Flint, Michigan). A kid playing a raw brass mouthpiece won't get much lead, even if he plays 8 hours a day with a wet embouchure. Now if he files it down and eats the filings, that is a different situation.

Also, many people with nickel allergies do not react to stainless steel. Don't ask me why -- I don't know.

[RConrad]

From the looks of it any product that contains any of the elements or chemicals that fall under Prop 65 is required to have a label informing people that the product contains that element or chemical. That label includes the risk level. Brass mouthpieces would probably meet that but should fall under "no significant risk" level. That'd require an actual study to be done though.... Personally I think things like this are a bit silly as the amount is pretty low and considering how long people have been using brass mouthpieces. It's like when people find out rice contains arsenic and freak out even though humans have been eating rice for thousands of years.

[Doug Elliott]

Raw almonds have cyanide - I only eat roasted almonds after I had a reaction.

Deprin has formaldehyde, one of the reasons I chose to use Lexan. I was the first to use that material for mouthpieces.

[JohnL]

Raw almonds have cyanide - I only eat roasted almonds after I had a reaction.

Peach pits have cyanide, too - though I doubt anyone would eat them. They used to do case hardening by packing steel parts in ground peach pits and "soaking" in a hot furnace.

[Matt K]

As someone who does cancer research, the study would very likely not be possible with the current levels of data that we have. I'm not aware of any data source that indicates if someone is a brass player or not. Some of them indicate occupation, which includes musician, but it isn't specific enough. Then you have to consider whether or not there would be too much noise, statistically. So are professionals more likely to be exposed to something that would cause cancer or less likely? Afterall, professionals might take other precautions that other players don't for one reason or another (leather grips; professional instruments that have sturdier lacquer, silver and then gold plated mouthpieces, etc). Certainly no database indicates what amounts of material a brass player was exposed to and for what periods of time as even if that data set existed, there's no way you'd be allowed to do research on it because you'd be able to identify the person who was the subject.

[ghmerrill]

Also, many people with nickel allergies do not react to stainless steel. Don't ask me why -- I don't know.

Maybe the particular alloy of the stainless steel? There seem to be quite a few of them.

[ghmerrill]

As someone who does cancer research, the study would very likely not be possible with the current levels of data that we have.

You'd also have to contend with the sort of "study design" or "experimental design" that epidemiologists apply when left on their own. Fundamental rule about studies and claims that "a study has shown that ...": Don't believe anything until you've read the complete study and evaluated all of the methodology -- including cohort selection and recruitment, data analysis (and things like "stratification" and other ways of slicing and dicing the population being tested), exactly how conclusions are drawn from the resulting "analysis" of the data, and what assumptions have been made in all of that. If you aren't capable of that sort of study analysis yourself, then you're stuck with someone who claims to have done it. In that case, good luck. Most people who will tell you what a study has "shown" haven't read any more than the abstract and the conclusion, or maybe just a summary of those. Ever wonder why there are so many studies that are then contradicted by later studies that are then contradicted by ...? They're not all bad. But way too many of them are.

(end of rant )

Doing the kind of study being suggested wouldn't be impossible, and it would probably be interesting. But how would you get it funded? I think that MAYBE it could be done on existing data. But getting access to that data (even if it contains the features you need, and if you have a reliable methodology to analyze it) would be terribly expensive (we're talking about massive biomedical/prescription/insurance data bases that cost on the order of $500K/year to lease (GE, UHC, Kaiser, etc.). Nobody's going to finance that for some slide pushers.

[BGuttman]

I don't believe there has been any study that correlated ingestion of zinc, copper, silver, or lead with the development of cancer. Such a study would not necessarily require the delimitation of musicians or trombone players.

We can run leach tests on brass to determine the rate of extraction of lead from brass by saliva. Don't know if this has ever been done. I certainly can't do it since I can't measure lead in appropriate concentrations. Still, I have played bare brass mouthpieces and mouthpieces needing replating. I haven't had any problem associated with this practice. But I'm a sample size of one and that's hardly any kind of study.

[Matt K]

Fundamental rule about studies and claims that "a study has shown that ...": Don't believe anything until you've read the complete study and evaluated all of the methodology -- including cohort selection and recruitment, data analysis (and things like "stratification" and other ways of slicing and dicing the population being tested), exactly how conclusions are drawn from the resulting "analysis" of the data, and what assumptions have been made in all of that. If you aren't capable of that sort of study analysis yourself, then you're stuck with someone who claims to have done it. In that case, good luck. Most people who will tell you what a study has "shown" haven't read any more than the abstract and the conclusion, or maybe just a summary of those. Ever wonder why there are so many studies that are then contradicted by later studies that are then contradicted by ...? They're not all bad. But way too many of them are.

Doing the kind of study being suggested wouldn't be impossible, and it would probably be interesting. But how would you get it funded? I think that MAYBE it could be done on existing data. But getting access to that data (even if it contains the features you need, and if you have a reliable methodology to analyze it) would be terribly expensive (we're talking about massive biomedical/prescription/insurance data bases that cost on the order of $500K/year to lease (GE, UHC, Kaiser, etc.). Nobody's going to finance that for some slide pushers.

Oh, I was just talking about retrospective data; don't even get me started on collecting your own data!

The big problem is linking it to the individual people who you'd have to find and gain consent from to be tied back. You could theoretically do it in the state of Utah, actually, because we have a claims database that covers all providers. Most of the big datasets don't even follow someone over a job change, let alone control for things like environmental exposures. (E.g. if you see someone with cancer, did their spouse and surrounding community have a higher incidence of cancer(s)? Or is it that you are a brass player? Or is that as a brass player, you go to smoky bars sometime and the 2nd hand smoke is bad? etc.)

But even Utah doesn't track people who leave the state and then have a cancer, but people who live here their whole lives would be okay... but even then, I know of a couple dozen brass players in the state. And some of them play in much different amounts. Even in NYC, I would be surprised if you had a cohort of more than a few hundred full time professionals over n years (if you even had a 50% rate of people who agreed to participate).

[LeTromboniste]

Raw almonds have cyanide - I only eat roasted almonds after I had a reaction.

Peach pits have cyanide, too - though I doubt anyone would eat them. They used to do case hardening by packing steel parts in ground peach pits and "soaking" in a hot furnace.

Yup, that whole family of fruits (almonds, peach, plums, cherries, nectarines, etc). Makes my lips and gums swell and my throat itch, but only if I eat a fresh raw fruit (i.e. recently in direct contact with the pit). Cooked is fine, as is canned, dried or under any other form I've tried.

[Reedman1]

I suspect you would find that brass players and other musicians in general live longer and healthier lives than the general public.

At least the ones that make a decent living.

[ghmerrill]

The big problem is linking it to the individual people who you'd have to find and gain consent from to be tied back.

You might be surprised about what can be done with the right "big data" sources and techniques. Even with anonymized records. When you're dealing with tens of millions of lives and hundreds of millions of records, there are things to be learned. In the area of the present discussion, however, that's all highly speculative. But it would be amusing to take a crack at it. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to that sort of data. And even when I did, no one would have let me use it for that -- or certainly publish the results. And the work would be too much like ... er ... work.

However, if you COULD get some sort of data that contained information about brass players (e.g., from military records such as the VA (another great source of data, but skewed in some ways) music schools and alumni associations, etc.) it could be interesting to run something like just a good association rule inducer on it and see what popped up.

[Doubler]

In a nutshell (pun intended)... Since contact with brass can cause surprisingly troublesome problems with some people and just plain literally stinks for most of the rest of us, it is practical to avoid contact with brass. Plating, as on mouthpieces and instruments, and plating or lacquer on instruments eliminates the risk/unpleasantness. 'Nuff said.