CPSC Rejects Industry Request to Exempt Crystal and Glass Beads From Lead-Toy Ban

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has denied a request from a children’s products industry group that wanted crystal and glass beads used in children’s clothing and other products exempted from limits on lead in children’s products.

The Fashion Jewelry Trade Association had asked the CPSC to exempt the items from new limits set by Congress for the amount of lead that can be contained in all children’s products. The product-safety rules permit no more than 600 parts-per-million of lead in children’s items and that limit will drop to 300 ppm in August 2009.

Makers of children’s jewelry had asked for permission to market products with crystal and glass beads containing between 900 ppm and 23,000 ppm of lead – well above the limit.

Companies often are fined for making, importing, or selling children’s products that contain excess levels of lead in paint, coatings, and other materials. Dozens of products are recalled each year for having potentially dangerous amounts of lead.

CPSC Chairman Inez M. Tennebaum said she voted to deny the association’s request to exempt crystal and glass beads because such items commonly fall off of toys and clothing, allowing them to be swallowed by young children. Ingesting lead has been linked to severe brain damage, learning disabilities, and other serious health effects in children.

Analysis by CPSC staff found that “mouthing or swallowing of small objects is part of the normal behavior of infants and young children,” Tennebaum wrote. Data collected from hospital emergency rooms shows that jewelry is one of the top five items ingested by children, she said.

“While commission staff recognized that most crystal and glass beads do not appear to pose a serious health risk to children, because ingested crystal beads that leach lead will result in some lead absorption, the request for an exclusion must be denied,” Tennebaum wrote in her ruling issued on July 17.

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