Lanphear said for most children, jewelry probably isn’t responsible for the cadmium in their bodies. “But for some kids, those kids that swallow it, it’s an extraordinarily important source,” he said. It also can enter the body by mouthing the jewelry.
Saying the voluntary standards don’t go far enough, Wright recommended that cadmium be removed from all jewelry and other children’s products.
“It's very concerning to me that cadmium can be found in a children’s product,” Wright said. “Even if one child in a million is exposed that’s one child too many.”
The jewelry is an example of how one dangerous substance often replaces another, Lanphear said.
“Perhaps the biggest failure is to fail to learn the lesson of the lead pandemic, that environmental chemicals and metals have the potential to be toxic, so in the end they shouldn’t be treated any differently than drugs. They shouldn’t be used unless proven safe,” he said.
This article originally ran at Environmental Health News, a news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.
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Add Comment--- They shouldn’t be used unless proven safe,” he said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds like a near-impossible task. Do we truly know that anything is "safe". Anything and everything in the world around us might be responsible for one thing or another over long-term exposure.
We can only use intelligence and past studies to come up with a list of possible dangers. Cadmium being a heavy metal probably should have already had a warning flashing- but other things.
Do we really know our paper cups that we put our coffee in isn't giving us alzheimers- or the material in our air-filters acting as the trigger that allows prions to move up to our brains?
Prooving something is safe is about as hard as prooving or disprooving a supreme being. You can't possibly run a test on everything that could possibly go wrong.
But Candium just sound so delicious!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA long long time ago, one of my university assignments was heavy metal contamination is the soils of Western Sydney.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCadmium was one of the metals I was doing AA spectroscopic analysis for. It has been know for a long time that it was as bad as lead.
prions to move up to our brains?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBirds....What are you really saying?
Most toxins are well known, Cadmium is one of them.
We have a good idea about what's toxic and NOT.
And can easily limit the known ones!
But, some people resist change.
Why?
Dear Marla Cone, keeping young children from ingesting heavy metals, in the form of objects, is part of good parenting. Renee Gardner said, "Iron helps prevent absorption of cadmium, so parents worried about exposure should ensure their kids have adequate iron in their foods." Good information to be sure; however, where iron is concerned many food products marketed for kids have iron added!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy larger concern regarding iron & kids is poisoning of children by self-ingestion of moms iron pills! That is a heavy metal problem that IS a leading killer (in the poisoning area) of small children, and, by the way, primarily a parenting problem!
Richard Carlson
Use my brain? Well, my brain remembers recent recalls of children's jewelry and toys due to lead content. Corporations certainly knew that was not a good thing! I see no reason to place faith in a "free market system" when it comes to our well-being vs. their profits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It interferes with the development of synopses, or connections between neurons, that allow a child to learn"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mean SYNAPSES, synopsis is something completely different.
In Europe the RoHS directive banned cadmium since 2002
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhy does the EU banned Cadmium from Europe since 2002 with the RoHS directive? Maybe they demonstrated Cadmium is neurotoxic 10 years ago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy husband's body was full of Cadmium when he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS), which is a neurological disease that kills you within 3 years + and there is NO cure. He was an aircraft mechanic for most of his working life. I met another woman whose husband who died of ALS body was very high in Cadmium and was an aircraft mechanic. Additionally, there is a much higher incidence of veteran's that were in the air force to have ALS. So much so, ALS has been categorized as a disease that is connected to armed services. So I think a litte due diligence on our part in exposing ourselves to chemicals, being aware is on step in the right direction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour readers should be aware of the greatest danger of contamination of Cd is from CdTe Photovoltaic power projects that are built around the world. Just one company, First Solar has delivered 5GW of CdTe PV modules around the world, covering about 100 million square meter of the earth's surface with these panels, containing over 200,000 kg of Cd.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt now has been established that this CdTe is water soluble in any kind of rain water, anything that is not distilled water. How can the US EPA tolerate this?
The irony of the industry is that if one believes in the importance and benefits of solar energy, as I do, one can use several other, either thin film of crystalline Silicon materials, at no higher costs to install PV electricity.
To top this, our premier scientific corporation, GE, has also selected CdTe as their material of choice to enter the PV industry with a $1 billion investment.
At the same time our primary competitor country in PV, China, does not even allow the installation of Cd containing PV materials.
I hope after your article calling our attention to the dangers of Cd to our children and grandchildren, our government will review the issue of CdTe
containing PV, covering the water tables of millions of Americans.
Are you serious??? Do you even understand what a true free market system is? It's one in which there are no regulations to protect the consumers. Everything is geared towards making money anyway a businessman under such system can dream of. Quality control??? Forget it. Poison in your food and drinking water? You better believe it. Punishment for the crooks? Maybe...if the consumer of such inferior products has the personal means to go after the cheats. I hate to break it to you; there is no such thing as a true free market system...not even our own (U.S market).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince it's a low incident problem. Why all the fuss? Iron added is not the same as Iron digestible. Added usually means it goes in and goes out. Misses the stations, so to speak.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIron is easy to get, use iron cookware. I don't know how much of an iron pan is bio soluble, but it tastes good. And if it keeps out the cadmium form my greens, cool.
We are omnivores, eating many things protects us from the many things we eat.
We'll let SA sort it all out, we will be too busy eating the many things.
In a solar panel, the CdTe is sandwiched between other layers (metal and glass among others), and would not be in contact with any rain (thankfully for both us and the solar panel). But with this information on cadmium, proper disposal, at the end life, of the solar panel most certainly needs to be done.
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