ND products testing positive for heavy metals

Jesus, dude... Google shit before you do stuff like this. You cannot use test strips to test for heavy metals content in supplements. They shouldn't even be used to test for heavy metals in water, or anything you are consuming. They are not accurate enough for that, and have tons of both false positives and false negatives. They can be used to test for high content of heavy metals in shit like paint or old toys, as a screen. The chemicals in these strips, usually Dithizone (diphenylthiocarbazone) or Rhodizonate, are not specific to lead. They can react with other common minerals like water hardness from calcium, zinc, iron, or MAGNESIUM turning the strip pink/red. This is a common thing that makes people freak out over their water for no reason. Conversely, high bacterial or chlorine levels can sometimes bleach the reaction, causing a false negative. This makes people think their water is safe when it is not. They are pretty useless, to be honest.

For the magnesium glycinate, what you are experiencing is a textbook case of cation interference. Your strips rely on simple colorimetric reagents, or chemicals that change color when they bind to a metal. These reagents are non-specific, meaning they bind to a whole class of metals; not just the toxic ones. Dithizone is a "promiscuous" chelator. It does not just bind to lead. It also binds to magnesium, calcium, and iron if they are present in high concentrations... you know, like when you are testing a MAGNESIUM SUPPLEMENT! When you dissolved the magnesium glycinate capsule in water, the concentration of Magnesium ions is thousands of times higher than any potential trace heavy metal. The test strip is being overwhelmed by the Magnesium ions, which force the reagent to change color. You didn't detect lead. You literally detected the magnesium you paid for.

For the L-carnosine, a different reaction is happening. L-carnosine is a dipeptide (beta-alanyl-L-histidine) with well-documented metal-chelating properties. Carnosine naturally binds to transition metals like zinc and copper. Because carnosine actively binds to metals, it can disrupt the equilibrium of the test strip's chemical reagents. It can either bind to trace zinc in the environment/water and deposit it on the strip, triggering a "heavy metal" reaction (since strips can't distinguish zinc from lead), or chemically react with the dye itself due to the imidazole ring in histidine, causing a color change unrelated to heavy metals. Once again, you are literally detecting the thing you bought, not some heavy metals in them.

We test every batch of every product for heavy metals using ICP-MS, or inductively couples plasma mass spectrometry. This is the most accurate way to test for the presence of any trace metals in a sample. Strips do not get anywhere near the detection limit needed to ensure lack of heavy metals in a sample you are going to be consuming. ICP-MS can get down to the parts per trillion level. We hold our supplements to the strictest standard in the world, which is California's Prop 65. This limit was set by taking the level of a heavy metal where damage was seen at in humans, then making the limit 1,000 times less than that. This means you could take 1,000 doses of that supplement IN A SINGLE DAY without it reaching the level necessary to cause damage. It's an insanely strict standard, and we work very hard to ensure we meet it. It's frankly a pain in the fucking ass sometimes to do, but we do it. We don't use $5 paper test strips to test our products. So why did your L-theanine have a false positive as well? L-Theanine is a simple amino acid that dissolves clearly and does not contain high levels of mineral cations (like magnesium) or strong chelating structures (like carnosine). It won't create the false positives you are seeing because of the chemistry of the sample.

So please, I urge you do to simple Google searches or use AI before posting shit like this. It would have immediately told you what the issue is. Don't try to assess complex chemistry without the fundamental knowledge behind how things work, or doing due diligence before posting damaging claims about products... on Christmas Eve, no less! My whole team is with their families right now, so I have to then leave my own family to once again explain some basic chemistry problem on Reddit for the thousandth time, and defend our products like we have not been the absolute leader in product quality and lab testing for almost thirteen years now. We go to great lengths to ensure our products are tested to the highest levels. I've dedicated the past 13 years of my life to this, and I take all our products myself, and give them to my wife and son. I don't just make products the best for all you here. I do it for myself and my family, too. If you think there is even a minute possibility that any of our products have harmful levels of heavy metals, much less two of them in the same order, you really don't know who I am.