ABC Tests 100 Children's Products and Finds 10 With Lead

Nov. 1, 2007 — -- As children across the country begin to compile their holiday toy lists, their parents are facing a major predicament. At at time when millions of toys have been recalled due to lead contamination, just how safe are the current selection of toys?

In a quest for answers, ABC News bought 100 popular children's products from 10 different stores and tested them for lead. The verdict? Good news, and some not very good news.

We'll start with the good. Out of the 100 toys tested, 90 were lead-free, certain to be a comfort to parents.

But 10 of the items tested did contain lead. Plus, the investigation found the Consumer Product Safety Commission's own test methods may be missing or understating lead in children's products.

ABC consulted a licensed lead risk assessor who used a Niton X-ray device made by Thermo Fisher Scientific to quickly screen all 100 children's products for lead. The products with the highest lead levels were then submitted to another laboratory to verify the results.

First, ABC found lead in a set of lotions and potions for girls made by Tween brands -- a pearl on the packaging contained lead. Getting an exact reading on such a tiny painted specimen is difficult. Lab tests found 500 parts per million, but the Niton X-ray device detected 2,000 parts per million. Lead paint over 600 parts per million is illegal.

Next up was a sport sipper bottle. Babies are meant to drink from it, yet we found it contained 300 parts per million of lead. The Food and Drug Administration has jurisdiction here and said it could take action if lead in a food-contact product can contaminate food.

"It's more than I want to see," said Bill Radosevich of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

A plastic duck, purchased at Cost Plus World Market, contained 800 parts per million of lead. Another plastic culprit: a saddle -- part of a Kmart set -- contained 1,600 parts per million.

Like the bottle and the duck, the lead was embedded in the plastic rather than in surface paint. But believe it or not, there is no set legal limit for lead in plastic toys.

Radosevich would like to see an outright ban. "Absolutely," he said. "There's no reason for lead to be in a lot of products so it shouldn't be there."

Some manufacturers argue that the total lead content of a product is not important. They say what matters is whether that lead is accessible to children.

In the past, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has argued that lead can't leach out of plastics, but that has recently changed. The agency issued its first recall due to lead found in a plastic toy, citing "a risk of lead exposure to young children." The commission declined to comments about ABC's lead findings.

"The CPSC has a battery of tests that we've used for a number of years," said Nancy Nord, acting chair of the commission. "They are viewed as the scientific level of excellence for dealing with this particular problem. So, without having our own set of tests, I really can't respond to yours."

So is the Consumer Product Safety Commission's battery of tests top notch? ABC hired yet another lab that uses the commission's methods.

Those tests didn't detect lead in the bottle, the duck or the saddle -- levels that two other techniques consistently identified.

Sandy Roda, who studied lead hazards for 34 years at the University of Cincinnati, wasn't surprised.

"The analytical methods that are being recommended by the CPSC today are not sufficient or adequate methods 100 percent of the time, not even 50 percent of the time to give us an accurate total led assessment of a child's item," said Roda, analytical laboratory director for the university.

The commission's lab method is most often used to analyze children's jewelry. It detected 800 parts per million of lead in a pendant from Claire's Boutiques, but the laboratory method we used -- one developed by another federal agency -- found 900 parts per million.

The findings raises the question: Could the commission be missing lead in other children's products that ought to be recalled?

Regarding the pearl on the Tween brand's lotions set, Tween said it removed the packaging in question as soon as the results were brought to the company's attention and then reported the pearl to the commission, which lead to a formal recall Wednesday.

Cost Plus World Market said it conducted its own tests on the ducks and also found lead in them, but the manufacturer believes that lead is trapped in the plastic. Nevertheless, World Market said it destroyed its remaining ducks and is offering concerned consumers a refund.

The bottle and saddle are both sold exclusively at Kmart. Kmart said both products passed the company's own internal tests and meet federal standards. Kmart said because of the rash of recalls of Chinese-made products, it has started doing random testing of its private label toys sold here in the United States.

Claire's Boutiques said the necklace we tested is meant for teenagers and young women rather than children and that the product passed its own lab tests.

So what did the Consumer Product Safety Commission have to say about ABC's tests of the commission's own methods?

Julie Vallese, a spokeswoman for the commission, said its lead-testing protocols "are sound and often used by U.S. companies to test the safety of children's products." She added that the commission's attention to the issue has led to 19 toy recalls so far this year.

The agency also recently purchased several X-ray devices after a member of Congress questioned why it wasn't using such devices.