subject: Good Housekeeping Research Institute Finds Lead And Cadmium In Children's Jewelry [print this page] Another research group has found that more children's jewelry than previously thought has very high levels of the toxic heavy metals Lead and Cadmium. The Good Housekeeping Research Institute tested many piece's of children's jewelry from three major U.S. retailers, Walmart, Claire's and Target. The findings from the testing show that every single piece of jewelry tested had toxic heavy metals present that far exceeded the Federal Governments standards for children's jewelry. Looks like this is turning into a consistent trend for jewelry sold in the U.S.
This extremely serious health hazard was first reported last year when extremely high amounts of Lead and Cadmium were found in children's jewelry sold in large retail stores including Walmart and Claire's in eastern States. The stories at times were front page news and the Consumer Product Safety Commission has proposed changing the definition of "children's product" because children will put the jewelry in their mouths making them much more susceptible to ingesting the toxic heavy metals. But this problem keeps occuring and even with States passing stricter consumer product laws and the Federal Government threatening the same very little seems to be happening since new stories keep coming to light of more product contamination. At what point is the safety of our children more important than the profits of big business?
I think that it is great that Good Housekeeping conducted this testing and alerted the public but why should the responsibility fall to private companies to keep doing this? Shouldn't product safety be a national or federal government priority? In light of the fact that the government will really do very little about this problem I recommend that parents refrain from purchasing any children's jewelry until it can be proven that it is safe for children. Maybe the loss of profits will motivate these companies to do the right thing and not allow toxic or hazardous products on their shelves.
