Know Your Rights
Lead in Your Water? How About Lead in Your Toys?
By Todd A. Smith & Shoshana T. Bookson
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recently issued its biggest product recall ever, when it announced that 150 million pieces of toy jewelry needed to be discarded because they contained dangerously high levels of lead.
Numerous studies have found that even small amounts of lead ingested by children can lead to permanent neurological damage, behavior problems or learning disabilities.
The jewelry includes a variety of styles of rings, necklaces and bracelets. The rings are usually gold or silver in color. The necklaces have black cords or are also gold or silver in color. The other recalled pieces of toy jewelry are charm bracelets or bracelets with medallions or fake stones.
The recall, affecting toys sold in 700,000 vending machines across the country, comes after two previous recalls of 2.4 million similar items over the past 10 months.
This most recent recall was prompted by news of a 4-year-old boy in Oregon who suffered lead poisoning after swallowing a pendant he bought for a quarter from a gumball machine.
The boy had 12 times the acceptable level of lead in his body. Scarily, tests of some of the recalled toys showed lead concentration levels by weight as high as 69 percent. The government prohibits the sale of paint that contains more than 0.06 percent lead.
Incidences of lead poisoning have been reduced by regulations requiring that lead be removed from gasoline and paint. But it was the prevalence of lead in such omnipresent products as toy jewelry sold from vending machines that prompted the CPSC to act so quickly.
The companies in question – A.A. Global Industries of Cockeysville, MD; Brand Imports of Scottsdale, AZ; Cardinal Distribution Company of Baltimore, MD; and L.M. Becker of Kimberly, WI – reached a settlement last week with the CPSC to halt imports of the jewelry and also reached a separate agreement over acceptable lead levels in toys.
Two of the importers, L.M. Becker and Brand Imports, had agreed to earlier recalls.
This presents a troubling question. Given what we know about the dangers of lead, how could the children's toys with high lead levels be allowed into the United States?
While there are no easy or obvious answers, there are some actions that parents can take to keep these dangerous toys out of the hands, mouths and even stomachs of their children.
The CPSC has posted pictures of the recalled jewelry on this Web site: http://www.toyjewelryrecall.com. They have also established a special agency hotline at 1-800-441-4234, where you can get more information.
For more consumer, health and safety information and tips, please visit NYSTLA's Consumer Section at http://www.nystla.org/consumer.
Todd A. Smith, president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, is a partner in the Chicago, IL, law firm of Power Rogers & Smith.
Shoshana T. Bookson, president of the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, is a partner in the New York firm of Shandell, Blitz, Blitz & Bookson, LLP.
