The Bindle Bottle Recalled Following a Consumer Reports Investigation

“The company has contacted the FDA in regard to voluntarily removing the product from the market due to concerns regarding the potential for lead leaching from the Bindle Bottle,” said Veronika Pfaeffle, a Food and Drug Administration spokesperson. “The FDA will continue to monitor this situation to ensure that the adulterated product is removed and will post the recall on fda.gov to ensure the public is aware of this action.”

A since-deleted post on Bindle’s website last week called the health risks of the bottles’ lead content “negligible,” but the company’s recall page on Friday states that the sealing dot “may contain excess amounts of lead,” which “potentially poses an exposure risk to lead if unpackaged food is placed in the dry storage compartment.” 

CR tested the storage compartments of three Bindle bottles and found lead levels that ranged from 90,800 parts per million to 155,000 parts per million. That’s approximately 1,100 times the levels legally allowed in many consumer products, according to Ashita Kapoor, associate director of product safety at CR, who oversaw the tests. Because of the risk of lead poisoning the Bindle poses, CR’s safety experts recommended that customers stop using it immediately, at all.

“Bindle Bottle takes this issue seriously,” Charlie Crisan, one of Bindle’s three co-founders, wrote in an email to CR earlier this week, before the recall announcement. “We are actively evaluating any potential risk associated with the small solder dot located at the top of the dry storage compartment. We stand behind our products and are committed to taking appropriate steps to ensure that our customers can continue to use their Bindle Bottles without concern for their health.”

Bindle did not answer CR’s questions about how many of its customers had already contacted the company to request a refund or a replacement for their bottles. All of the Bindles on the company’s website are currently listed as “sold out.”

Bindle’s recall notice and website do not mention another potential health problem identified by CR: Some of the bottles CR tested contained bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical linked to fertility problems and certain cancers, despite claims on the product that it is BPA-free. In an email to CR last week, Crisan, at Bindle, said that it had tested its bottles’ surfaces for BPA. But the company’s tests did not look for BPA levels as low as CR’s did, so did not detect any BPA. 

In testing the Bindle, CR was responding to a tip from lead-risk activist Tamara Rubin, who ran her own test and posted about it on her blog, Lead Safe Mama, in January.