Written by Tim Lavalli
 NEWS/Monday, 03 December 2007

With recent scares around the world about the levels of lead in products coming from China, it was only a matter of time before someone wondered what the weighty component in poker chips was.

Sure enough, a recent series of tests show that poker chips used in many of the latest Las Vegas poker rooms had lead levels in their paint in excess of Environmental Protection Agency standards. These were not just instances of ‘a little too much lead’; in fact, some levels were 400% higher than approved safe levels. This was just in the paint used on the chips, the next question was: “Well what about the chips themselves.”

Good question; bad answer. Some chips were found to be over 50% lead. As one researcher said:
"If you were to take chips like these and spread them out, 1000 of them on the ground, essentially it would be a federal Superfund (toxic clean-up) site. That's how much lead is in these things. I've been doing this for many, many years and seldom do we run across products that contain this much lead that are in people's homes."

And it is precisely “in the home” where this is a problem. Not a lot of poker players put chips in their mouth but they do take them home as souvenirs and then children who are much more vulnerable to lead poisoning will have access to those dangerous chips.

This first warning about specifically about the ‘Paulson brand’ of chips — used in many casinos from Las Vegas to South America and Asia, and sold at retail to gamblers. Testing has already begun on other manufacturer’s chips. No word yet on the regular non-poker casino chips but we can expect a lot of new lead-free chips to start showing up in poker rooms soon. A quick survey of poker room staff this weekend made it clear that many players had read the report