May 25 , 2007

Toxic Lunch Box

by Heather World
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

When Isabel Samaras read that some vinyl lunch boxes contained lead, she ignored federal reassurances that the health risks were low, threw away her son’s Darth Vader model and posted signs at his preschool, Buen Dia, warning other parents of the danger.
“I called the store that sold it and told them all about it, but they had a, "Yeah, well, everything gives you cancer," attitude, which is a great song by Joe Jackson but a lousy customer service angle,” said the Samaras, a Mission District resident.

Like many of her friends who have children, Samaras knew that even low lead levels in a child’s developing body can cause learning and behavior problems. Manufacturers like to use the substance in lunchboxes because it stabilizes the vinyl, preventing it from cracking and lengthening its life.

Most lunchbox manufacturers, many of whom are located in Asia, agreed to remove lead from their lunchboxes when an Oakland-based environmental advocacy group threatened them with legal action.  However, questions remain about the testing procedures used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) -- the federal regulatory agency charged with protecting consumers against health risks – to determine likely exposure levels from leaded lunchboxes. 

The Congressional committee responsible for consumer protection held hearings last month to determine why CPSC interpreted even low lead levels in lunchboxes as unlikely to cause risks to children.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), using CPSC’s test results, warned manufacturers to reduce lead content lest the mineral leach into the food inside.  While the two federal agencies have overlapping responsibilities, CPSC is responsible for monitoring consumer products, while the FDA focuses on food and drugs.

In a February letter to CPSC, the Energy and Commerce Committee asked why the Commission found any amount of lead in children’s lunchboxes to be safe.  “Shouldn’t all school lunchboxes be lead free?” the Committee wrote. “If other chemicals can be substituted, why is CPSC not requiring that?” 

Tainted lunchboxes first made news in the summer of 2005, when the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) announced it had found alarmingly high lead levels in the vinyl lining of many of the hundred or so lunch boxes it tested. According to the Center, though the lunchbox lead was unlikely to cause acute lead poisoning, its presence in conjunction with other lead exposures could endanger children.

Ten-year-old CEH works to protect consumers from environmental and public health hazards.  The organization acts as a sort of private enforcer of Proposition 65, a 1986 California measure that requires businesses to warn customers if their products contain chemicals that the state has found to be potentially harmful, said Caroline Cox, CEH’s research director.  The group has fought to remove lead from imported candy [see xx View] and children’s toy jewelry; and arsenic and other toxic chemicals from playgrounds.

Shortly after announcing its findings, CEH began suing lunchbox manufacturers and, in some cases, retailers like Toys ‘R Us and Walgreens, under Proposition 65 to get the lead out. The two top manufacturers, InGear and Fashion Accessory Bazaar, quickly agreed to reformulate their products with an eye toward eliminating interior vinyl altogether.  This, in turn, triggered a wave of settlements with smaller producers.

Meanwhile, CPSC conducted its own tests for the presence of lead in lunchboxes. While CEH had melted the lunchboxes to analyze their chemical make-up, CSPC’s scientists employed a “swab test,” in which they swabbed a box and analyzed the level of transferred contamination.  CPSC found that while the lunchboxes contained lead, the risk of dangerous exposure was minimal.  According to the agency, a child would have to touch his lunchbox and lick his hands 600 times a day for more than two weeks to ingest enough lead to cause health problems.

Cox said that CPSC’s internal documents -- obtained by the media through the Freedom of Information Act -- indicate that the Commission’s scientists changed their testing methods mid-stream, resulting in lower estimated exposure risks.  CPSC initially sampled lunchboxes by swabbing different spots, and found that lead levels exceeded federal limits for paint. The Commission then switched methods and swabbed the same spot repeatedly, which resulted in less lead being found.   “The average amount per wipe became lower,” Cox said.

Actual risks are most likely somewhere between what CEH and CPSC found, mainly because consumers use products in different and sometimes unforeseen ways, said Dr. Yan Chin of the California Department of Health Services’ childhood lead poisoning prevention branch.   “It’s probably a little more than a swipe and a little less than a digest,” he said. For example, some children will lick melted candy from the inside of their lunchbox, whereas others grab sandwiches and carrot sticks swaddled in plastic bags or wax paper.

Lead is a natural mineral ubiquitous in our environment, said Chin.  The leading causes of lead poisoning are paint, dust, soil and imported ceramics and herbal remedies. Alternative stabilizers for vinyl used in lunchboxes exist, he said. They just cost more.

For many parents, including Andrew Rhein, a Glen Park father of two, money isn’t the issue. “If I saw two identical lunchboxes and one said ‘lead free’ and the other did not, I would probably buy the lead free - even if it cost more,” he said.  Yet even this precaution may not help, according to CEH.  Last autumn the group found that at least two manufacturers who claimed their lunchboxes were “lead-free” based their findings on CPSC’s less rigorous testing methods.

Many parents, already coping with the risks associated with drinking milk from hormone-treated cows, harmful chemicals leached from plastic baby bottles and myriad other scares, have passing knowledge of potentially toxic lunchboxes.  Others, like Carrie Hadler, rely on home-testing kits to evaluate their children’s boxes.  “Paper bags don't hold up well enough,” said the Sunset mom. “I should have kept that metal Mork and Mindy lunch box from when I was a kid.”

CEH is monitoring the issue, testing new lunchboxes as they come on the market.  “It’s ongoing,” Cox said. “A new company could start-up and be unaware of the issue.”  For her part, Samaras continues to warn other parents.  “I'm the very annoying person at the playground and store who will tell other people,” she said. But Darth Vader and other favored characters don’t confine themselves to vinyl, she found.  “We switched to hard plastic,” she said.