Lead and Children's Jewelry

Filed in archive Jewelry News on December 13, 2006

We seem to read almost daily about dangerous amounts of lead being discovered in children's jewelry. My best advice it just don't buy that crap you see in the gum ball machine or dollar store - period. You just really never know what it is made out of.

If you want your children to wear jewelry, get them a few good piece and allow them to wear it when you are around.

However, it is still nice to hear that The Consumer product safety Commission has come up with a plan to help parents with this issue:

The Consumer Product Safety Commission voted Monday to limit the amount of lead allowed in children's jewelry to cut the risk of poisoning.
The action follows 14 recalls since 2004 of about 160 million necklaces, rings and bracelets with dangerously high levels of lead. More lead jewelry recalls are expected within weeks.

The commission is most concerned about children's jewelry because kids are the most likely to put jewelry in their mouths.

A 4-year-old Minneapolis boy died of lead poisoning earlier this year after he swallowed a bracelet charm. The charm bracelets, sold with women's Reebok sneakers, were later recalled.

"We've seen so much of this jewelry entering commerce, we felt we needed to take strong action," acting CPSC Chairman Nancy Nord says.

CPSC researchers say that from 2000 to 2005, 20,000 children under 18 were treated in emergency rooms after swallowing jewelry of all types. Exposure to lead can cause problems including neurological damage, delayed mental and physical development and hearing loss.

The Sierra Club petitioned the CPSC to issue mandatory rules on lead jewelry. Jessica Frohman, chair of the Sierra Club's National Toxics Committee, says the group is pleased with the move to limit lead to 0.06% by weight, which is the limit in California law.

"We're going to go with current science," Frohman says. The group will take the issue up again, "if we learn children can be harmed when lead is ingested in that quantity."

Until the mandatory rules take effect, jewelry will continue to be covered by voluntary rules that include tests of how much lead a child could potentially come in contact with. Some jewelry pieces have coatings that reduce the risk that lead could seep through.

The new rules will eliminate that test and simply prohibit the sale of any jewelry with lead over the limit.