Dr Uwe Reischl

I was having coffee with my good friend, Professor Uwe Reischl, PhD and MD. The conversation meandered to some of the great inventions and leaps in technology in disease prevention and how the Lumetallix instant lead test could become one of them. He shared my excitement about the Lumetallix product and its potential.

“Theoretically, it is a wonderful invention,” he said, pulling out a pen to draw a diagram on a napkin. “Could you tell me about its sensitivity and specificity? “Great question,” I said, “I need to know more about this myself.” I will ask the scientists who invented it.

The Elephant In The Room

Without solid specificity and sensitivity, I realized, the cup is empty—no point in wasting our time beating around the bush. Cutting to the chase removes all the hoopla, smoke, and mirrors. These two aspects express the core value, or lack thereof, of what the invention does. I wrote to Dr Lukas Helmbrecht, one of the scientists who invented the Lumetallix reagent, to see what he had to say. Weasel words were not going to fly. I had inserted myself into a discussion among scientists. My expectations were high as I hit send.

Here is what Dr Lukas Helmbrecht had to say. Joe, thank you for the question. You and Uwe do not mess around. Here is everything I currently know about this subject.

Specificity

Dr Lukas Helmbrecht

“Lumetallix can only react with lead.”

• We can explain this chemically: In the field of solar cells, they are also making perovskites, and they try to make them lead-free, which has proven to be very, very difficult. Those that they make lead-free have a different chemical formula. It is thus highly unlikely to have a false positive. (And if we do, we will have solved one of the world’s biggest solar cell challenges)
• We can also explain it experimentally: We tried many other metals, especially those that are close to lead in the periodic table and have been historically confused with lead like tin and antimony. Nothing did light up (Once I had lead-free solder that did light up and got stressed, till we checked with an x-ray in the electron microscope and found that it actually was lead solder)
• Some other things can be confusing: Some ink of Sharpies, foil markers, etc., as well as turmeric, do not glow by itself under UV, but they do glow once they are made wet with isopropanol. There, it doesn’t matter if this is isopropanol from hand sanitizer or our spray (sometimes, even some vodka is enough). This can be misleading, but as it can be checked by spraying hand sanitizer, this isn’t a false positive. We have also observed some glassware emitting a green glow when exposed to UV light alone, so this is something to be aware of.

Sensitivity

How sensitive is it now that we have established how it only sees lead? More sensitivity is better, so here is what he had to say about sensitivity:

We tested in the lab and found that we can even see eight nanograms with the naked eye. Effectively that means that the detection limit is one grain of lead-paint dust. This would be impossible to find with an XRF. The sensitivity is described here in figure 2 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c06058

At the coffee reunion with Uwe I shared the email with Uwe and the link to the published pier reviewed paper and he was astounded, “Rarely in science or medicine do we find things that are this specific or sensitive.” he went on to say that typically, a test of this nature is merely a screening test that is used in conjunction with other tests to narrow down the etiology or the root cause of a problem. To say I was beaming with pride was an understatement. To be distributing this product gives me hope that it will become universally accepted and used as a front-line product in the fight against childhood lead poisoning. Time will tell.

Your comments are welcome. To ask questions or get more information about lead testing, click here to email me directly, or call 208-908-4418

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