December 2007
Our test findings
With the holiday shopping season here, American toy companies are trying to assure anxious parents that lead contamination
problems are limited. "I think you can be confident toys are safe as long as you get rid of toys that are recalled," says
Joan Lawrence, vice president of the Toy Industry Association.
But our tests found cause for concern. We screened products from stores and consumers' homes in the New York metropolitan area using home lead testing kits and an X-ray fluorescence analyzer.
We focused on products made with materials more likely to contain lead, such as brightly painted items, on which lead is used as an inexpensive pigment. Special attention was paid to children's products.
Items screening positive underwent further testing in our labs and in an outside lab to measure total lead--the amount on the surface as well as embedded. Total lead is important, but surface lead, or "accessible" lead, is of more immediate concern. We used a variety of methods to measure accessible lead and simulate the exposure a child might get from touching or mouthing an item.
Our tests found high total lead levels in three new samples of a red toy blood pressure cuff from classic Fisher-Price Medical Kits purchased in the New York area and three samples from the homes of employees of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.
We detected the highest concentration of total lead, more than 10,000 parts per million, in a cuff that a child had regularly played with for the past two years. There are no federal accessible-lead regulations for this kind of item. So we tested for accessible lead in this product by adapting a Consumer Product Safety Commission wipe-test method used for products such as vinyl lunch boxes, which have materials similar to the cuff. We assumed that a child would touch the product at least 30 times daily. Based on the levels of accessible lead we measured, we estimated that the child could receive a dose of more than 15 micrograms per day. That amount could raise blood lead levels to 10 micrograms per deciliter, the level currently defined as elevated. Consumers Union alerted Fisher-Price and asked the CPSC to investigate this product based on safety concerns. Fisher-Price declined to comment.
Other plastic children's products we tested had high levels of total lead content, although our tests indicated that negligible amounts would be accessible to children through touching or mouthing new items. Those included orange caps from seven Elmer's Glue Sticks with designs from "Dora the Explorer," "Go, Diego, Go!" and "SpongeBob SquarePants," and three Jordan Kids' backpacks shaped like ducks. There is no federal standard for lead in plastics, but the amount of lead detected in the glue stick caps was more than three times the 600 parts per million allowable for paint in the U.S.
If you own those items, Consumers Union recommends that you remove them from use. Experience with lead-tainted vinyl miniblinds in recent years suggests that exposure to sunlight and heat can cause some plastic items to release embedded lead over time. It's not known how the products we tested will age.
Brass keys can be another source of potential lead exposure, as Katrina Barron of South Bend, Ind., recently found.When her daughter Aurora's blood test revealed an elevated blood lead level of 11 micrograms per deciliter in July 2007, a local health department investigation identified Katrina's house and office keys as one potential source of exposure.
"Almost every time I'm in the supermarket checkout line, I see parents dangling their keys for babies to play with, but now I know enough to warn them not to," says Barron.
But our tests found cause for concern. We screened products from stores and consumers' homes in the New York metropolitan area using home lead testing kits and an X-ray fluorescence analyzer.
We focused on products made with materials more likely to contain lead, such as brightly painted items, on which lead is used as an inexpensive pigment. Special attention was paid to children's products.
Items screening positive underwent further testing in our labs and in an outside lab to measure total lead--the amount on the surface as well as embedded. Total lead is important, but surface lead, or "accessible" lead, is of more immediate concern. We used a variety of methods to measure accessible lead and simulate the exposure a child might get from touching or mouthing an item.
Our tests found high total lead levels in three new samples of a red toy blood pressure cuff from classic Fisher-Price Medical Kits purchased in the New York area and three samples from the homes of employees of Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.
We detected the highest concentration of total lead, more than 10,000 parts per million, in a cuff that a child had regularly played with for the past two years. There are no federal accessible-lead regulations for this kind of item. So we tested for accessible lead in this product by adapting a Consumer Product Safety Commission wipe-test method used for products such as vinyl lunch boxes, which have materials similar to the cuff. We assumed that a child would touch the product at least 30 times daily. Based on the levels of accessible lead we measured, we estimated that the child could receive a dose of more than 15 micrograms per day. That amount could raise blood lead levels to 10 micrograms per deciliter, the level currently defined as elevated. Consumers Union alerted Fisher-Price and asked the CPSC to investigate this product based on safety concerns. Fisher-Price declined to comment.
Other plastic children's products we tested had high levels of total lead content, although our tests indicated that negligible amounts would be accessible to children through touching or mouthing new items. Those included orange caps from seven Elmer's Glue Sticks with designs from "Dora the Explorer," "Go, Diego, Go!" and "SpongeBob SquarePants," and three Jordan Kids' backpacks shaped like ducks. There is no federal standard for lead in plastics, but the amount of lead detected in the glue stick caps was more than three times the 600 parts per million allowable for paint in the U.S.
If you own those items, Consumers Union recommends that you remove them from use. Experience with lead-tainted vinyl miniblinds in recent years suggests that exposure to sunlight and heat can cause some plastic items to release embedded lead over time. It's not known how the products we tested will age.
Brass keys can be another source of potential lead exposure, as Katrina Barron of South Bend, Ind., recently found.When her daughter Aurora's blood test revealed an elevated blood lead level of 11 micrograms per deciliter in July 2007, a local health department investigation identified Katrina's house and office keys as one potential source of exposure.
"Almost every time I'm in the supermarket checkout line, I see parents dangling their keys for babies to play with, but now I know enough to warn them not to," says Barron.
