At this time of year, charities give away new toys, clothing, accessories, jewelry and more to citizens can’t afford to buy them. For the second consecutive year, Essco Safety Check provided free X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) testing to help identify certain products that may contain potentially harmful elements in those donated products. Any item that was found with potentially harmful elements was not given away. It was taken to be re-analyzed.
Items found to contain heavy metals
Found in some of the consumer products that were tested was lead, cadmium, antimony and other heavy metals. The biggest offenders were purses, jewelry and ceramics, of which several of the items could be considered children’s products. Children’s products are subject to regulations regarding the amount of lead that is permitted in the item. The legal limit in total content that is permitted in a children’s products is 300 parts per million (PPM), unless it is a painted item, and, that amount of lead permitted is only 90 PPM.
Essco Safety Check does not know who donated the items, when they were donated, if the items were purchased brand new and then brought immediately to the charity or if these items were purchased ten years ago and now just being donated. Essco Safety Check has attempted to contact each manufacturer or importer of the items with information that was found about each product. Of the findings, the readings are from X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyzers which determine if the heavy metal is present and how much is present in total content.
Several name brand items were found to contain lead in including;
Several other purses were found to contain 1000s of PPM of lead, as well as a ceramic mug which appears to have lead in the glaze or ceramic at about 8400 PPM of lead which is 28 times over the legal limit for lead in a children’s product, this ceramic looked designed for a child.
Another example, one brand of jewelry tested appears to contain high quantities of lead in the metal. In several pins, which according to the company’s compliance officer is not considered a child’s product, was last manufactured in 2005. Since these products were manufactured before the Children’s Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was enacted, the law establishing limits of lead in children’s products, this product and other products are not subject to the regulations. This creates a potential problem because these items are grandfather in. This jewelry was found to contain lead in the metal ranging from 21.96% to 47.39% and antimony from 8084 PPM to 1.43%. These are unacceptable amounts. Even though the compliance officer said the pins were not designed or marketed to children, some people may think otherwise because of the packaging and design. In another piece of jewelry from the same distributor (again packaging appears to target children) was found with 4.69% of lead.
The pin found with 47.39% lead contains 1580 times the legal limit.
These results pose several questions:
1. What are charities or thrift stores suppose to do to ensure the safety of the products that they donate or sell? How do we let the public know that these products are not regulated the same as new products?
2. How is the CPSC going to protect children from potentially harmful items if regulations are only applied to new purchases, yet some newly donated items, are in-fact several years old and thus grandfathered in the regulations?
3. Why do we have different regulations for different products? Children’s products, medical devices, ceramics, all have different regulations regarding heavy metals, unless they are designed and marketed to children.
In discussions with the product manufacturers and importers Essco Safety Check found out that several of the products tested were in-fact several years old and no longer being manufactured. These products appeared to look new and be in their original packaging. All companies that Essco Safety Check spoke to were looking into these issues.
Just because there is something potentially harmful in your environment does not mean that it will harm you, however, if you know what is in your environment you can mitigate harm.
