Feds focus on lead in kids' jewelry

Her daughter was 5 in 2004 when Erin McGuire bought her a necklace with ballet charms that were marked "silver."

When Chelsea wore it, she'd suck on the charms. "We would always tell her to take it out of her mouth," says McGuire of San Jose, Calif.

A couple months later, Chelsea's school suggested she be tested for lead poisoning. The results showed a lead level of 27, nearly three times higher than the government's minimum risk level of 10. Soon after, the charms, which contained lead, were recalled.

A year ago, Jarnell Brown of Minneapolis died after swallowing a lead-filled charm, and at least seven other children have been poisoned by lead in children's jewelry in the past 10 years.

The use of lead paint in toys from China has become an issue after three Mattel mat recalls, including one this week. Now, the federal government is proposing, for the first time, to regulate lead in children's jewelry.

A lack of regulation, spotty testing by manufacturers, an understaffed government agency and few inspections at the U.S. border mean hundreds of thousands of the tiny trinkets parents buy for their children may still have dangerously high levels of lead, some current and former Consumer Product Safety Commission officials say.

The new CPSC proposal, expected by year's end, would limit the amount of lead that can seep out of jewelry to 0.06% of total content, or no more than 600 parts per million. Those limits were adopted in California this summer and are the same as what's allowed in house paint and toys.

But critics say the standard is based on outdated research and falls short of what is needed to guarantee children aren't at risk of the learning and behavior issues linked to lead. "All of the (lead) standards need to be completely revisited," says Bruce Lanphear, a physician and director of the Environmental Health Center at Cincinnati's Children's Hospital.

'Catch as catch can'

Despite the fact that lead in children's jewelry was becoming a concern in the late 1990s, it wasn't until the poisoning of Colton Burkhart of Portland, Ore., in 2003 that CPSC was shocked into action. The 4-year-old's blood lead level reached 123, more than 12 times the minimum risk level, after he swallowed the medallion from a vending machine necklace. Today, Colton's lead level is still higher than 10.

CPSC went from referring to the risk from ingesting lead as "exposure" to calling it "poisoning," and the staff changed its stance that lead in jewelry was OK if it wasn't "accessible" to children (for example, if the lead was coated sufficiently). Now, it is not only proposing regulations for lead in jewelry for children under 6 but is considering including older kids' jewelry, as well.