Charms on “Best Friends’’ bracelets sold at Claire’s contained 89 and 91 percent cadmium, according to testing organized by the AP, and shed alarming amounts in a procedure that examined how much cadmium children might be exposed to.
“While we have no reason to believe that this product is unsafe, out of an abundance of caution, we are taking this action because we take our responsibility to our customers very seriously,’’ Claire’s said in a statement.
Customers who return the item will be offered store credit.
Meanwhile, an official with China’s product safety agency said it would examine the findings on cadmium contamination.
“We just heard about this, and we will investigate,’’ Wang Xin, a director general for the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said yesterday at a toy safety conference in Hong Kong.
Though Wang does not have the authority to order a full-bore inquiry, his comments were the government’s first on the matter and show China’s nervousness about potential troubles in the United States, the biggest export market for China.
Also yesterday, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who sits on the Commerce Committee, called for a hearing on cadmium in imported children’s jewelry.
“There’s no excuse - toxic jewelry and toys need to be off our shores and out of our stores,’’ said Klobuchar, who helped engineer stricter legislation on lead in children’s products that became law in 2008.
On Monday, Wal-Mart pulled products as politicians in the United States promised new legislation and inquiries. The attorney general of Connecticut promised to investigate suspect costume jewelry. A New York state legislator called for a ban on children’s jewelry with cadmium.
Lab tests conducted for the AP on 103 pieces of low-priced children’s jewelry on sale in the United States found 12 items with raised levels of cadmium, which can hinder brain development in young children, according to recent research, and is known to cause cancer.
The findings come after a string of product-quality scandals in 2007 that caused Congress in 2008 to ban toys and other products for children that contain lead - another dangerous and once commonly used material. Cadmium is even more harmful.
A soft, whitish metal that occurs naturally in soil, cadmium is perhaps best known for its use in rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries. It is also used in pigments and plastic and in electroplating.
