Reduction in the Prevalence of Lead-Containing Jewelry in California

Synopsis. A year-long monitoring study shows that approximately 4% of jewelry at major California retailers is not in compliance with legal standards ...
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Environ. Sci. Technol. 2010, 44, 6042–6045

Reduction in the Prevalence of Lead-Containing Jewelry in California Following Litigation and Legislation CAROLINE COX* AND MICHAEL GREEN Center for Environmental Health, 2201 Broadway, Suite 302, Oakland, California 94612

Received December 10, 2009. Revised manuscript received May 22, 2010. Accepted June 24, 2010.

Exposure to lead-containing jewelry has been identified as one cause of elevated blood lead levels. Because of the significant health effects of lead exposure, litigation and legislation in California set standards for lead content of children’s and adult jewelry. We measured compliance with these standards for jewelry sold at 42 major retailers statewide. During a one-year period, we purchased over 1500 pieces of jewelry and used a two-step process (X-ray fluorescence analysis followed by laboratory verification) to identify noncompliant jewelry. About 4% of the jewelry we purchased did not comply with California lead standards, dramatically less jewelry with high lead content than has been measured in the past in California and in other states. We identified violations at 26 retailers. The violations were not restricted to particular types of jewelry or a particular price range. Most violations exceeded state standards by at least 2×. The most common violation was the “lobster-claw” clasp often used on necklaces. Litigation and legislation have been effective tools for reducing the prevalence of jewelry with high lead content in California. We are continuing our monitoring for at least another year with a goal of reducing the frequency of jewelry in violation of California lead standards to near zero.

Introduction Lead’s toxicity is well documented and has been recognized for centuries (1). In the last two decades, research demonstrating the far-reaching effects of exposures that result in small increases in blood lead levels has made prevention of lead exposure a high priority (2). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set a goal of eliminating elevated blood lead levels in children by 2010. The importance of this goal was recently quantified by Muennig (3) who estimated the monetary benefits of reducing blood lead levels of all children in the U.S. to less than 1 µg/deciliter to be 1.2 trillion dollars. The ability of lead to impair cognitive development in children is one of its most significant effects. Recent research showing that children’s cognitive development is particularly susceptible to prenatal exposure to lead (4-6) demonstrates the importance of also reducing lead exposure to women of childbearing age. Lead-containing paint remains the primary source of lead exposure to children (7). However, about 30% of elevated * Corresponding author phone: (510)655-3900 x308; fax: (510)6559100; e-mail: [email protected]. 6042

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blood lead levels in children are not associated with a lead paint source. Lead-containing consumer products are one of the sources of this nonpaint exposure. Two tragic poisoning incidents in Oregon and Minnesota (8, 9) followed by largescale recalls of lead-containing jewelry (10-14) highlighted the significance of jewelry as a consumer product with the potential to cause lead exposure. In California, lead-containing jewelry was the subject of litigation based on the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. A 2006 consent judgment negotiated by the California Attorney General, two nonprofit organizations, and major jewelry retailers and distributors set lead standards for both children’s and adult jewelry (15). The standards were subsequently codified in California law as Health and Safety Code sections 25214.1-25214.4.2. California’s Department of Toxic Substance Control is responsible for the implementation and enforcement of the law. The compliance dates for the California standards were September 1, 2007 for children’s jewelry and March 1, 2008 for adult jewelry (15). The standards for children’s jewelry require that lead content of most components not exceed 600 mg/kg. Standards for jewelry not marketed to children require that lead content of metal components be less than 15,000 mg/kg (unplated metal) or 100,000 mg/kg (electroplated metal) and lead content of plastic components and surface coatings be less than 600 mg/kg. (The lead standards for plastic and electroplated metal were lowered on August 31, 2009, at the end of the period covered by our research.) In 2008, Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. The lead standards in the law apply to jewelry designed for use by children 12 years of age and under. During the period of this research these federal lead standards limited lead content to 600 mg/kg, similar to the standards for children’s jewelry in the California law. The 2006 consent judgment also created a jewelry testing fund to pay for monitoring of retailers’ compliance with both the consent judgment and state law. Here, we report on the findings of the first year of monitoring by the jewelry testing fund. This project is a unique opportunity to assess the efficacy of legal action and statutory standards in removing an environmental health threat from major retailers’ inventories.

Experimental Methods Between September 1, 2008 and August 31, 2009 we purchased 1511 pieces of jewelry from 42 major retailers in 35 California towns. There was no systematic process for selecting jewelry; we simply purchased an assortment of jewelry from each retailer. About 5% of the jewelry pieces fit the definition of “children’s jewelry” in California Health and Safety Code section 25414.1 (made for, marketed for use by, or marketed to children ages six and younger). Another 25% was jewelry marketed to teenagers and preteens. We screened the jewelry for lead content using an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzer (Innov-x Import Guard) mounted in an integrated test stand. We screened each component of each piece of jewelry without doing any sample preparation using a 30-s test in “Restriction of Hazardous SubstancesWaste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (RoHS-WEEE)” mode. We did additional testing of components whose lead content in the XRF screening was close to or above the California standards to precisely identify the component with a lead content above state standards. We sent jewelry that our screening showed was in violation of the state standards 10.1021/es903745b

 2010 American Chemical Society

Published on Web 07/06/2010

FIGURE 1. An example of a “lobster-claw” clasp with lead content above California standards. to an independent commercial laboratory for confirmatory analysis using the method specified in the California Health and Safety Code section 25414.4. In brief, the method involves an acid digest followed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analysis. We also verified that handto-mouth exposure could occur from handling lead-containing jewelry using a surface wipe test of one component following National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health method 9100 (16). Some jewelry components could be relatively easily detached from the rest of the piece of jewelry and had a shape and size that made swallowing by a child possible. For these jewelry components, we estimated the amount of lead exposure if a child ingested them by multiplying the weight of the component by its lead content. Following the process set out in the consent judgment described above, we provided results of the commercial laboratory tests to the California Department of Justice. The attorney general then notified retailers about jewelry that violated California lead standards and required them to remove the noncompliant jewelry from store shelves.

Results Over 95% of the jewelry we tested complied with state and federal standards. We found 59 pieces of jewelry that violated California lead standards at 26 different retailers. We found multiple violations at 12 retailers. The most common violation was the “lobster-claw” clasp, frequently used on necklaces and occasionally on bracelets. (See Figure 1.) Other violations included metal components such as charms and pendants, plastic cords, and surface coatings. Most violations exceeded state lead standards significantly; averaged by jewelry type and component, violations ranged from 5× to 93× state standards. (See Table 1.) The largest violation was a surface coating on a bracelet that was 250× the state standards; the smallest violation was a surface coating that was 1.6× the state standards. Jewelry that did not comply with California lead standards also varied widely in terms of price and target consumer. Our violations included jewelry purchased at both discount

retailers and retailers that sell expensive merchandise. The least expensive violation cost $2.80 and the most expensive violation cost $200.00. While more than 80% of the violations we identified were in jewelry marketed for adults, one of the violations we found was a piece of jewelry that was marketed to young children, and nine were from retailers that market to teenagers and preteens. The proportion of noncompliant children’s and preteen/teen jewelry was less (1% and 2%, respectively) than for adult jewelry (4%). We identified 6 potentially swallowable high-lead components. Five were charms or pendants on necklaces; the sixth was a charm on a bracelet. Five of the six components provided a total potential lead exposure if swallowed of over 2 g; the highest potential exposure was over 5 g. The lead content of the six components averaged 530,000 mg/kg, over five times the standard for adult jewelry. Although quantitative documentation of “hand-tomouth” exposure (the exposure that occurs following handling of lead-containing jewelry) was not part of the scope of this compliance monitoring project, we did estimate the potential for this kind of exposure from one piece of children’s jewelry. Our surface wipe tests showed that 2.0 µg of lead were removed by the wipe test from a jewelry component (pendant) whose lead content was 2200 mg/kg (3.6× the California standard). The potential exposure of 2.0 µg is 4.0× the threshold for daily lead exposure under California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act (17). Our XRF screening results were correlated with digest/ ICP-MS results, although the correlation between results of the two methods explains less than half of the variability in the data. (See Figure 2.) The correlation coefficient between the two was 0.66 (t ) 6.57, d.f. ) 56, p < .001). In all but 8 of the noncompliant components tested, the digest/ICP-MS results exceeded the XRF results.

Discussion We do not have baseline information that is as comprehensive as that from this study about the frequency of lead-containing jewelry at California retailers prior to the recent litigation and legislation, but available data show that lead-containing jewelry was extremely common. Maas et al. (18) tested 285 pieces of jewelry purchased in California prior to 2005. Over 50% of these items had components that were more than 30,000 mg/kg lead; almost 40% had components that were over 500,000 mg/kg lead. Studies from other parts of the country also indicate that lead-containing jewelry was common. Weidenhamer and Clement (19) found that about 40% of 139 inexpensive jewelry pieces purchased in five states included components that were over 80% lead. Yost and Weidenhamer (20) found that surface coatings on about 10% of over 100 pieces of inexpensive jewelry with imitation pearls were between 3 and 23% lead. By contrast, in the current project we found that about 4% of California jewelry has high lead content, and only one of the violations we identified was the surface coating on an imitation pearl. In brief, our study found dramatically fewer lead problems than what was found in the earlier studies. Because the high-lead jewelry we identified was not limited to particular types of jewelry, jewelry components, retailers, or price levels, there is no simple way for consumers to avoid purchasing jewelry with illegal lead content. This highlights the importance of enforcement programs like those conducted by the California Department of Justice. Our primary concerns about high-lead jewelry are the well-documented health effects of chronic low-level exposure that can occur during repeated handling of the jewelry. Our results, however, also raise concerns about the potential for acute poisoning incidents. Over 10% of our violations were potentially swallowable jewelry components with a size and VOL. 44, NO. 16, 2010 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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TABLE 1. Summary of Jewelry with Lead Content Exceeding California Standards type

lead-containing component

number

mean lead content of component (mg/kg)

mean amount component exceeded California standard

necklace necklace bracelet earrings bracelet necklace bracelet necklace earrings bracelet anklet earrings ring

lobster-claw clasp pendant or other metal component charm metal component surface coating plastic cord bar clasp surface coating solder lobster-claw clasp charm plastic “leather” plastic “pearl”

21 9 5 4 4 4 3 3 2 1 1 1 1

596,000 545,000 695,000 469,000 30,523 7110 610,000 55,800 363,000 605,000 720,000 4140 8330

6× 5× 7× 5× 51× 12× 6× 93× 24× 6× 7× 7× 14×

shape approximately the same as the jewelry responsible for the poisoning incidents reported in 2004 and 2006 (8, 9). XRF spectrometry has recently become a popular, quick, and relatively inexpensive technique for measuring the lead content of consumer products. The benefits of the technique are that it can be nondestructive, can be done without timeconsuming sample preparation, and can be used on samples that are too small for conventional laboratory analysis (21). However, questions have been raised about the accuracy of XRF data similar to our screening results because the XRF results are dependent on the surface characteristics of the sample, the geometry of the sample, and the homogeneity of the sample material. These three factors varied in our jewelry; therefore we did not expect a strong correlation between our XRF results and the results from acid digestion followed by ICP-MS analysis. The thickness of a test sample that can be penetrated by the X-ray beam in an XRF varies significantly depending on the type of material being analyzed. In general terms this relationship is described by those experienced in XRF consumer product screening as “For metal samples, penetration is only about 10 micrometers. For non-metals, the penetration is up to 1 centimeter” (22). Many of the violations we identified involved electroplated metal, with a lead-containing alloy covered by electroplating that did not contain lead. Because the XRF analyzer penetrates only the surface of metal items, we expected the XRF results on these plated components to be less than the digest ICPMS results. Overall, however, the correlation between the two test methods was robust enough to give us confidence that the XRF is a cost-effective, efficient tool for identifying jewelry with lead content in violation of the California standards. Several companies provided the attorney general with results of company-sponsored tests of jewelry components

FIGURE 2. Comparison of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) screening of jewelry for lead with conventional laboratory analysis. 6044

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similar to components that we had found were not in compliance with lead standards. The company results showed compliance. This indicates that lead content can vary widely between duplicate pieces of the same jewelry item and that frequent testing is important to successfully comply with lead standards. Similar variation in lead content was noted in the Minnesota poisoning incident (9). Because of the significant acute and chronic health effects of lead, we remain concerned that any jewelry exceeds California standards. We are continuing to monitor jewelry for lead content for a second year with a goal of eliminating the sale of jewelry that does not comply with state standards.

Acknowledgments The California Department of Justice provided funding for this project and was a partner in all phases of this research. The success of this project is due to the collaboration with Harrison Pollak (California Department of Justice) and the careful work of Kyle Gardner and Christina Medina (Center for Environmental Health). Lexington Law Group provided excellent representation for the Center for Environmental Health in the litigation referenced in this study.

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