Ban Lead From Kids Products

Behold the trio of toxicity. Three Maxwell & Williams mugs clearly designed for children. Two of these belong to Erin Evis – Apothecare Natural Health’s kids, and my son picked out the third at Briscoes. When Erin’s son’s hair test came back with lead in it a few months ago, she started testing her crockery, and shocked all of us when she found positives. See, in the US, any product that’s designed for (or attractive to) kids must meet their rigorous toy standards, which means a maximum of 100 ppm lead in total, or 90 ppm in a paint. And the US ceramics regulations aren’t too bad either. So I naively assumed NZ crockery would also be pretty safe, because you know, the global marketplace… but no. These mugs would be illegal in the US. And we think they could have contributed to her son’s lead exposure since she can’t find any other sources in her modern home. Plus, we know the lead is coming out of the mugs because the lead check swabs say so.

Now, for the finale of my lead testing results reports this weekend… lead painted kids glasses. The bee and cat unicorn glasses were purchased a few months ago at Briscoes and the unicorn straw glass was purchased last week at the warehouse. Interestingly, the warehouse glass has a sticker that says “not to be used by children under 8 years old”, presumably because they know how much lead is in it?! So apparently it’s ok for 8 year olds to be exposed to lead painted drinkware but not 7 year olds.

This illustrates the problem with NZ regulations. Our ceramics standards are totally inadequate, but also, kids products like mugs are not held to any higher standard. The NZ toy standard only applies to toys. Whereas in the US, sensibly, any children’s product must be very low in toxicants. Full stop. We need the same here. Please see my previous posts and sign the petition to ban lead from kids products. At least we can do better for the kids!