Generally, glass cups and bottles has only one material, namely Glass. This hard, transparent, and seemingly unnatural product was actually made in ancient Egypt 4,000 years ago.

Ancient Egypt Glass

Glass is not only beautiful and easy to model, it is more resistant to high temperature, low temperature, corrosion resistance, non-toxic and harmless. Even bacteria and parasites are not easy to survive on its. In modern times, we divide Glass material into below three types, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glasss and lead-free crystal glass.

First，Soda-lime Glass. Soda-lime glass cups are cheap, but sometimes have a lot of impurities, like bubbles, scratch, mold mark etc.

Soda-lime glass cups

With the development of technology, a material called borosilicate glass (hard glass) was developed. The glass cups are brighter and more resistant to high and low temperatures, more importantly, it has a smaller coefficient of thermal expansion, which means it is less likely to explode.

Borosilicate glass

People always hope to find more crystal-clear glass; therefore, a texture can be comparable to crystal glass – crystal glass appeared.

Soda-lime glass (Left) and crystal glass (right)

Crystal glass is not crystal, and has a crystal luster of real glass. The secret of this glass is the addition of lead oxide. With the addition of lead oxide, the glass is more textured, clear and bright, and the sound of percussion is very pleasant. But as the lead content increases, the glass becomes softer and more abrasive. As a result, lead content is generally less than 40 percent. The famous Swarovski “artificial crystal” is actually this kind of lead crystal glass.

Is this glass harmful to the human body?
Although glass contains a high amount of lead, when used in drinks, the lead does not dissolve into the drink in large quantities, so the amount consumed is far from harmful to the body. You can use it safely. In addition, this kind of lead crystal glass costs a lot of money and is basically used in high-end cups. The mass-produced cups on the market are mainly borosilicate glass.

Is there any better glass?
Of course, since leaded glass doesn’t sound very friendly (though it’s not toxic), and lead oxide is not very green, someone tried to replace lead oxide with barium oxide, zinc oxide, and so on, and “lead-free crystal glass” appeared. The glass has the properties of crystal glass and is environmentally friendly. However, the luster of lead-free crystal glass is actually a little less than that of lead-based glass, but it is transparent enough.

             Lead-free crystal glass

About BMGLASS
As one of professional glass products supplier in China, BMGLASS has 8 years of experience in manufacturing and exporting. We can supply you the soda-lime glass cups and bottles, lead-free crystal glasses and borosilicate glass cups. All our material can pass FDA and SGS test.
Media Contact:
Ella Tang
Email: ella@boommachinery.cn
www.boomingglassware.com