Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Unable to use lead in products it sells to the United States, manufacturers of children’s jewelry in China are turning instead to cadmium—a heavy metal known to cause cancer. The Associated Press had a laboratory test a random sampling of Chinese-made jewelry for kids and discovered pieces containing as much as 91% cadmium by weight. Some of the most contaminated jewelry was sold at Walmart, at the jewelry chain Claire’s and at dollar stores. Pendants produced as marketing tie-ins for the Disney movie The Princess and The Frog also had high levels of cadmium.
The laboratory analysis found that some jewelry pieces easily shed the heavy metal if chewed or sucked on. Classified as a carcinogen, cadmium can interfere with brain development in young children.
“There’s nothing positive that you can say about this metal. It’s a poison,” Bruce Fowler, a cadmium specialist and toxicologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the AP. Cadmium ranks No. 7 on the CDC’s priority list of 275 most hazardous substances in the environment.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, responsible for regulating toys sold for children, has yet to recall any items because of their cadmium content.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Popular Kids’ Trinkets Loaded with Toxic Metal (by Justin Pritchard, Associated Press)
Safety and Health Topics: Cadmium (U.S. Department of Labor)
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