“If I was a parent, I would avoid it entirely.”
A Washington state investigation has shown that pieces of jewelry adorning children’s dresses that were sold by national retailers such as J.C. Penney and Dillard’s contained toxic metals, the Seattle Times reports. The article says that the state’s Department of Ecology tested 27 pieces of jewelry from dresses purchased last October – at physical stores and online – and found that five of the pieces had extremely high levels of cadmium and lead. The dresses are specifically marketed toward young girls, who would be at risk if they were to swallow the jewelry or put it in their mouth, for example.
“These are astonishingly high levels,” Charles Margulis, media director for the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, CA, told the news outlet. “Five out of 27 is way too high a risk to take. If I was a parent, I would avoid it entirely.”
As part of a prepared statement issued to the news outlet, a J.C. Penney spokesperson said: “JCPenney has an established standard for cadmium in all children’s products, including jewelry. We require our suppliers to meet that standard and to have test data to support their compliance. In light of the recent reports, we are reaching out to our children’s product suppliers to ensure that they are meeting our requirements. As soon as we learned of these test results, we removed these items from our inventory and they are no longer available for purchase.”
Read more at the Seattle Times