The Threat of Lead

Lead is not simply a danger to families with crumbling paint in old houses. It is something you could encounter in any number of items you buy at the store and bring home for your children.

Companies should be concerned with their bottom line and profits, but not at the expense of the health of our children. Yet that is exactly what is happening with regard to lead in various children’s product.

For example:

• Several soft plastic lunch boxes have tested high in lead, with at least one showing 90 times the legal limit for lead in paint in children's products. And with our children’s food touching the lead-tainted plastic, that is a concern.
  
• In the past few years, there have been numerous cases of children suffering from serious lead poisoning due to jewelry exposures, prompting health warnings and national jewelry recalls. Recently, 71 companies signed onto a legal settlement to eliminate lead exposure risks from such products, but five other companies refused, and one of them is the world’s largest retailer: Wal-Mart.
  
• Certain candies imported from Mexico have contained dangerous levels of lead in the past—and some of the companies that make the candies are owned by Hershey and Mars. These corporate parents have shown little interest in trying to correct the damage caused by such candies.

With help from our members, other concerened citizens and other like-minded groups, we will hold corporate powers accountable for these problems, and we can motivate the government to tighten up its monitoring and standards as well. We know that with enough citizen support we can make this happen.

Facts and Information

• Lead is known to be harmful to children even in minute amounts, as it can impair brain development and cause other behavioral and developmental problems. Children may be exposed to lead from lunch boxes when they eat food that has been stored in them.
• The majority of the more than 100 lunchboxes that CEH had tested do not contain lead, so there is a good chance that your lunch box may be safe. However, because it is not easy to tell by sight, at this point the only way to know for sure is to test the lunch box yourself. You can test vinyl lunch boxes using a hand-held lead testing kit, available at most hardware stores. Two reliable and easy-to-use brands are PACE's Lead Alert (also available by calling 1-800-884-6073) and LeadCheck (also available online at www.leadcheck.com).
• The levels CEH found in the lunch boxes are not high enough to cause acute lead poisoning during normal use. However, if your child is exposed to lead from other sources, a leaded lunch box would add to their health risk. Because lead has been shown to cause developmental problem in young children at very low levels, CEH believes it is important to eliminate all controllable sources of lead exposure, including lunch boxes.