I agree that hand-held XRF guns should be able to detect such lead levels, and I believe that was in fact what the police used when they did the publicity stunt in the Bangladesh market. At any rate, it sounds like you know a lot more about the question than I do. I was only disputing pfdietz's comment, "The concentrations of lead being discussed here are as much as 1000 ppm or even higher."
Good call because results should be expectd to be all over the ball park, and I think even higher numbers could be found. But no amount of lead is supposed to be acceptable.
>sounds like you know a lot more about the question
SSDD says it all without explanation, but here's a little.
Until you've spent lots of time at the bench, it's not easy to understand why a 1000 and a 483 might just be the same sample tested in different labs.
Or even the same lab on different days.
If so that would look even more embarrassing when my arbitrary reporting convention < 500 is applied.
But it's actually not unheard of to get a positive and a negative on the same sample even with some of the most sophisticated equipment
Explaining the rest of the story could fill textbooks, but the operators wouldn't be reading them anyway :\
So that's the most important thing to know, besides the actual spectrums which are table stakes.
