What we found

Our latest tests come four years after we began routinely checking consumer products for heavy metals. We examined a variety of children's products and household items that seemed likely to contain heavy metals, based on past recalls and our own previous tests. They included children's jewelry, metal barrettes, and vinyl children's products and window shades. We also screened items such as pens, sunglasses, and lipstick for lead, cadmium, and mercury, another toxic heavy metal.

Of the more than 30 products we tested using an initial screening method called X-ray fluorescence spectrophotometry (XRF), 14 showed relatively high levels. They were sent for further testing to an outside lab to determine total amounts of lead, cadmium, and mercury. Samples of three items were found to contain levels of heavy metals near or above regulatory limits or levels that could be hazardous under certain circumstances.

A green clover-shape cell-phone charm sold at the retailer Claire's caused the greatest concern. Some we tested contained levels exceeding 100,000 ppm of total lead. Given those levels, a child who accidentally swallowed a charm could be at risk for lead poisoning. Although the charm is not marketed specifically to children 12 and under, it could appeal to that age group or it could be accessible to them if a parent or older child has one.

Federal rules say that the 300-ppm lead limit applies to all children's products, which the 2008 law defines as "designed or intended primarily for children 12 years of age or younger." Similar questions of age might also arise with another item we tested, the Revlon Couture Hair Accessory, a barrette made of metal and decorated with small colored rhinestones. Samples of some tested positive for total cadmium at levels as high as 293,000 ppm, though potential for significant cadmium exposure through normal use is low. The barrette is not marketed to children but it could interest and be accessible to them.

The cadmium recalls announced this year were based on language in the Federal Hazardous Substances Act that prohibits the makers of children's products from using chemicals or metals in amounts that the CPSC considers "hazardous." But some manufacturers and retailers continue to argue that even if an item containing high lead levels might be appealing to preteenagers or is sold in stores popular with that age group, the product itself is not "intended primarily for children" and therefore does not violate the law.

It's up to the CPSC to determine whether such an item qualifies as a children's product, but it has not yet officially defined the criteria to be used in making that call. "CPSC is currently in the middle of federal rule making to define what is a children's product and establish the assessment criteria," Wolfson says.