With the huge toy recall currently under way, proceeded by pet food and then toothpaste contamination, the eyes of the world continue to look toward China to explain what the heck is going on over there! Toys, toothpaste, pet food, and children's jewelry is also on the list. In fact, lead in children's jewelry has been an issue on-going for years, and according to this article from The International Herald Tribune, not much seems to be changing as this continues to be a safety issue:

Despite a two-year effort to eliminate the threat of poisonous lead in inexpensive children's jewelry, hundreds of thousands of tainted items are still being sold across the United States, the U.S. government has found.

Inspections by the Consumer Product Safety Commission of 85 pieces of jewelry collected since last autumn from U.S. retailers and importers determined that 20 percent still posed a potential poisoning hazard.

[...] the problem with the children's jewelry, persisting after two years, reveals just how difficult it may be to resolve the problems.

Guo Lisheng, a deputy director general at the Chinese General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, wrote in a March letter to the U.S. agency that jewelry with lead was not a danger as long as it was covered by a protective coating.

A formal ban on lead in children's jewelry that was proposed by the agency, Guo said, was unnecessary and would "increase the cost of producing and inspection of the manufacturers of children's metal jewelry, and bring unnecessary obstacles to trade."

U.S. officials say they have made progress in curtailing lead in children's jewelry, but that they need more enforcement powers, like the ability to impose fines or even criminal charges against repeat offenders. Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the U.S. agency, said, "We want to get to a point of not having to do recall after recall, and simply make the marketplace safe."

The tainted jewelry has been brought onto the market by big-name outfits like Mattel, Juicy Couture and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, which included 746,621 lead-contaminated "bonus charms" in a Shirley Temple movie package.

But scores of small importers like Really Useful Products, a company with six employees in Darien, Illinois, also delivered children's jewelry to national retailers with dangerous levels of lead.

Hello, Guo! Wake up! No lead, even covered by a coating, is safe for children, or even adults for that matter. Coating wear off over time.

So, as you dig through your child's toy box for those recalled toys, don't forget to check her jewelry box as well.