EPA acts against lead in kids’ items
Companies that make or distribute toys and other children’s products will face tougher government scrutiny to keep out lead that could poison and kill children or harm their brain development.
The Environmental Protection Agency agreed in response to legal pressure to write to as many as 120 importing and manufacturing companies by the end of the month, instructing them to provide health and safety studies if any lead might be found in the products they make for children.
“Parents still need to be vigilant about the recalls on products marketed to children that might contain lead and take those products away from children as soon as they are recalled,” Jessica Frohman, co-chairwoman of the Sierra Club’s national toxics committee, said Sunday.
The EPA letters are part of a settlement it signed Friday with the Sierra Club and another advocacy group, Improving Kids’ Environment.
The agency also must tell the Consumer Product Safety Commission “that information EPA has reviewed raises questions about the adequacy of quality control measures by companies importing and/or distributing children’s jewelry.”
Lead can cause severe nerve damage, especially in children. The EPA says lead emissions have dropped more than 90% since it was first listed as an air pollutant in 1976, mainly by removing lead from gasoline.
Other sources of exposure to it include food and soil, solid waste, coal, oil, iron and steel production, lead smelters and tobacco smoke.
Although the EPA can ban a substance such as lead, only the commission has the authority to ban a product. The Sierra Club last year petitioned the EPA and the commission to monitor and ban the production of children’s necklaces, bracelets, rings and other jewelry that contain lead.
After the EPA rejected the petition, the two groups sued the EPA last year in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where the Sierra Club is headquartered.
The suit also followed the death of 4-year-old Jarnell Brown of Minneapolis, who died last year from acute lead poisoning after swallowing part of a charm bracelet distributed by Reebok International.
The child’s death was ruled accidental, but Reebok recalled 300,000 of the silver-colored, Chinese-made bracelets that the company had given away with its shoes. The trinkets were found to be 90% lead.
The attorneys general in California and Illinois sent letters to the EPA supporting the groups’ legal challenge.
In December, the commission began taking steps to ban, rather than recall, children’s jewelry containing more than 0.06% lead by weight -- about one ounce for every 100 pounds. California and Chicago have adopted the same standard.
