Cheap Teen Jewelry Full of Lead, Study Finds

Inexpensive fashion jewelry sold at teen stores like Wet Seal, Forever 21, Claire’s and Charlotte Russe is laden with lead, according to a new study by the Center for Environmental Health. The study found lead-tainted jewelry in 10 California stores.

From Greener Design:

Two recent studies, both published in the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’s peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives, demonstrated the impacts that lead exposure during pregnancy can have on a woman’s unborn child.

One study, investigating children’s IQ scores in relation to their mother’s blood lead level, concluded that lead exposure during pregnancy could have “lasting and possibly permanent effects” on a child’s IQ. The second study showed that lead exposure during the first trimester (three month period), when some women are not even aware that they are pregnant, had the most pronounced effects on a child’s mental development.

The other stores on the list include The Buckle, Cost Plus, DD’s Discount, Express, Saks Fifth Avenue and Styles for Less. It’s not yet known how many of these jewelry items may have been imported from China, where lead contamination in manufacturing plants is all too common.

It would be easy to simply say “don’t buy cheap crap”, but especially considering that kids and teens seem to be getting the short end of the stick in terms of lead-contaminated jewelry and toys, that’s not really fair. It sucks that we can’t count on retailers to protect us and our children from this sort of thing. Hell, we can’t even trust the government to protect us. May I suggest a switch to all-natural handmade jewelry instead?

Link [Greener Design]

Roses Are Red, Lipstick (Still) Has Lead

In 2007, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested 33 popular brands of lipstick and published their shocking find: 61% of those lipsticks contained lead, even trusted ‘natural’ brands like Burt’s Bees. Levels ranged up to 0.65 parts per million – and experts say even tiny amounts can be harmful. Unfortunately, it’s now 2009 and many brands of lipstick still contain this hazardous substance.

From The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics:

“Lead builds up in the body over time and lead-containing lipstick applied several times a day, every day, can add up to significant exposure levels. The latest studies show there is no safe level of lead exposure,” according to Mark Mitchell, M.D., MPH, president of the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice.

The good news is that lipstick doesn’t need to contain lead: 39 percent of lipsticks tested by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics were lead-free – including a $1.99 tube of Wet & Wild. Obviously, it is possible to make lead-free red lipstick.

So why aren’t all companies doing so?

Because they don’t have to. It’s legal for lipstick and other cosmetic products sold in the United States to contain unlimited amounts of lead. While some companies are taking care to use raw materials that are not contaminated with lead and to purchase lead-free pigments, other companies are not taking these precautions. For the list of all the brands we tested for lead, see page 10 of our report, “A Poison Kiss”.

The FDA has still not taken action after the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics published its data on lead in lipstick. A Califonia state bill to ban lead in lipstick died in the Senate in 2008 after a massive industry lobby effort. We can’t trust companies to keep us safe, so we’ve got to be our own advocates.

So, when you’re applying a sexy red pout for your Valentine’s Day date this Saturday, make sure your chosen lip color is lead-free. Lead isn’t listed on the ingredients, so you can’t go by that – check out this list of 11 lead-free lipsticks at The Daily Green for surefire choices.

Link [Campaign for Safe Cosmetics] + [The Daily Green]
Photo credit: Flickr user Ká

Handmade Toys to be Illegal Under New Consumer Safety Law

After being betrayed by large toy corporations that manufacture their products in Chinese factories with little regard for the health of the children that the toys will ultimately belong to, parents in America have turned to local toy makers who thoughtfully hand-craft items like dolls, train sets and blocks. But, now, because of a ham-fisted attempt by the U.S. government to belatedly control an industry that puts profits far ahead of people, those handmade toy artisans might lose their businesses.

It seems like every week we hear about another popular toy that’s being taken off the shelves (after many have already been sold) due to high levels of lead, unsafe parts and other safety problems. So, stricter regulations are certainly welcome. But, in passing the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) in August, Congress failed to exclude safe handmade toys made in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

From the Handmade Toy Alliance:

Among other things, the CPSIA bans lead and phthalates in toys, mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys and requires toy makers to permanently label each toy with a date and batch number.

All of these changes will be fairly easy for large, multinational toy manufacturers to comply with. Large manufacturers who make thousands of units of each toy have very little incremental cost to pay for testing and update their molds to include batch labels.

For small American, Canadian, and European toymakers, however, the costs of mandatroy testing will likely drive them out of business.

• A toymaker, for example, who makes wooden cars in his garage in Maine to supplement his income cannot afford the $4,000 fee per toy that testing labs are charging to assure compliance with the CPSIA.
• A work at home mom in Minnesota who makes dolls to sell at craft fairs must choose either to violate the law or cease operations.
• A small toy retailer in Vermont who imports wooden toys from Europe, which has long had stringent toy safety standards, must now pay for testing on every toy they import.
• And even the handful of larger toy makers who still employ workers in the United States face increased costs to comply with the CPSIA, even though American-made toys had nothing to do with the toy safety problems of 2007.

What this means is, unless the law is modified, handmade toys will be illegal to sell in the United States. Some European toy makers have already announced that they will no longer be selling their products in the U.S. come February, meaning parents have fewer safe products to choose from.

As the Handmade Toy Alliance put it, “If this law had been applied to the food industry, every farmers market in the country would be forced to close while Kraft and Dole prospered.” That doesn’t make any sense at all.

Here’s how you can help: write to your United States congressman or congresswoman and your senator to request changes to the CPSIA that would protect handmade toys. You can use this sample letter, provided by the Handmade Toy Alliance. We’ve got to protect the local artisans who make a living off providing our kids with safe, natural alternatives to the plastic junk made in China.

Link [Handmade Toy Alliance]
Photo credit: Etsy seller Petit Flaneur

One in Three Toys on Store Shelves is Toxic

This Christmas, when you’re shopping for the little ones in your life, don’t just thoughtlessly grab toys off the store shelves. An environmental group found that a mind-boggling 1 in 3 toys tested was found to contain toxic chemicals like lead, flame retardants and arsenic.  The Ecology Center tested more than 1,500 popular toys for contaminants and found that one-third of them contain “medium” or “high” levels of chemicals of concern.

From CNN:

Researchers bought the toys at chain stores including Target, Kmart, Toys R Us, Babies R Us, TJ Maxx, and Wal-Mart, as well as drug stores, dollar stores, on-line retailers and independent toy stores, according to the HealthyToys.org Web site, where the report was posted.

The toys were purchased at stores in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Mich.; Oakland, Calif.; and Albany, N.Y.

The group’s Web site said that the sampling was not random or intended to be representative of all toys on the market. The toys were tested using a handheld X-ray fluorescence (XRF) device that uses x-ray fluorescence spectrometry to detect chemicals like lead, cadmium, chlorine, arsenic, mercury, tin, and antimony.

The study found lead in 20% of the toys tested. In 3.5% of the toys, or 54 items, levels of lead exceeded the federal recall level for paint, 600 parts-per-million.

Also according to the study, children’s jewelry is 5 times more likely to contain lead above the toxic 600 ppm-level than other toys. In particular, the report mentioned that several Hannah Montana brand jewelry items tested high for lead.

Naturally, the toy industry is refuting the report, calling it ‘misleading’ and saying that toys are a “highly regulated industry that has been subject to intense scrutiny”. But, the thing is, toy manufacturers only meet very low minimum standards set by the government.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is putting new regulations in place for toy safety – but not in time for the Christmas buying season. That means that although, come February, many of the toys currently on the shelves will become illegal due to high levels of dangerous contaminants, thousands of those toys will already be in homes across the country.

Shop safe for your kids this holiday season – check out HealthyToys.org, the consumer guide to toxic chemicals in toys.  It has toy rankings including best toys and worst toys – and you can search by brand.

And, The Daily Green has a list of toys that have recently been recalled due to lead.

Link [CNN Money] + [Healthy Toys]

EPA Grows a Pair and Toughens Lead Pollution Limits Despite Lobbying

The Environmental Protection Agency has finally done the right thing and reduced the legal limit of lead emissions, despite years of lobbying by industrial battery recyclers who claim the limit will put them out of business.  The lead regulations hadn’t been updated since 1978, and over 6,000 studies have shown that exposure even to miniscule amounts can cause problems like mental retardation in children, nerve damage and heart attacks.

From The Huffington Post:

“Our nation’s air is cleaner today than just a generation ago, and last night I built upon this progress by signing the strongest … air quality standards for lead in our nation’s history. These levels reduce allowable levels of lead exposure by ten times,” said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Stephen Johnson. “When my children were young, EPA protected them by phasing out lead in … gasoline, and thanks to this standard EPA will protect my grandchildren from remaining sources of lead.”

The EPA has a long history of giving in to lobbyists’ requests at the expense of public health, and given that its main responsibility is to protect us and the environment, we hardly feel that we owe them any thanks for actually doing their job.  While toughening the lead pollution limits is extremely important, considering all of the other things they’ve failed to do, the most we can muster is a bored, toneless “whoopee”. Now get back to work, EPA!

Link [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Does Your College Have Lead-Laden AstroTurf Fields?

Hundreds of colleges and universities across the country have chosen AstroTurf as a low-maintenance, supposedly eco-friendly alternative to live grass. Athletes roll around on it every day, and no doubt fumes and microscopic particles are kicked up into the air during games and practice. Recently, it’s been found that there are disturbing amounts of lead in this bright green synthetic turf.

From Plenty Magazine:

Four New Jersey artificial playing fields have registered high levels of lead, the neurotoxic heavy metal, and the U.S.Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating, according to the Washington Post . And not only that, but the recycled crumb rubber fill used as padding has been found to release toxic volatile organic compounds (VOC)s. These include styrene-butadiene, classified by the EPA as a probable human carcinogen, and whose inhalation can produce irritation of eyes, nose, throat and lungs. Another VOC in the fill, ethylene-propylene, is on EPA’s hazardous air pollutants list.

If your college has an AstroTurf field, it might be a good time to push for an alternative. Of course, you don’t want your school to tear up the fake stuff and replace it with grass they’re gonna pour pesticides and herbicides onto. Push for an organic lawn. If it can be done on golf courses, there’s no reason it can’t be done on your home team’s playing field. You can get more info at SafeLawns.org.

Link [Plenty Magazine] + [Safe Lawns]
Photo credit: Flickr user D. de la Peña