BILL ANALYSIS AB 1681 SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY Senator S. Joseph Simitian, Chairman 2005-2006 Regular Session BILL NO: AB 1681 AUTHOR: Pavley AMENDED: June 12, 2006 FISCAL: Yes HEARING DATE: June 26, 2006 URGENCY: No CONSULTANT: Bruce Jennings SUBJECT : LEAD-CONTAINING JEWELRY SUMMARY : Existing law : 1) Establishes a "Universal Waste Rule" under which high volume, relatively low-risk hazardous waste (such as many consumer products containing mercury and lead) can be handled, recycled, and disposed of according to simplified, "universal" rules. Universal wastes produced by households and small businesses can continue to be disposed of in landfills until February 2007. Otherwise, universal wastes must be sent to authorized recycling facilities or to a universal waste consolidator. 2) Lists lead on California's Proposition 65 (the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986) list which includes all toxins that are known to the state to cause cancer and reproductive damage. 3) Prohibits, pursuant to the Federal Sherman Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Law, the sale of adulterated food, including food adulterated with lead. 4) Prohibits the installation of leaded pipes. 5) Prohibits the sale and distribution of toys containing lead paint. 6) Prohibits the sale and distribution of tableware containing lead above certain levels. AB 1681 Page 2 7) Requires the Department of Health Services (DHS) to establish a childhood lead poisoning prevention program to identify and conduct medical follow-up of high-risk children and to establish procedures for environmental abatement. 8) Requires DHS to assess a fee against persons who contributed to sources of lead contamination to fund the activities of the state' childhood lead poisoning prevention program. This bill : 1) Requires that on and after March 1, 2008, no person shall manufacture, ship, sell, or offer for sale jewelry for retail sale in California unless it is made entirely from Class 1, Class 2, and/or Class 3 materials, as defined: a) Class 1: Contains no lead. b) Class 2: Metal Alloys with less than 10 percent lead that are electroplated with suitable under and finish coats before August 31, 2009 and 6 percent on and after August 31, 2009. c) Unplated metal with less than 1.5 percent lead that is not listed as a Class 1 material. d) Plastic or rubber, including acrylic, polystyrene, plastic beads and stones, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) components can contain no more than 600 parts per million (ppm) on and before August 30, 2009 and 200 ppm on and after August 31, 2009. e) Dyes or surface coatings containing less than 600 parts per million lead. f) Class 3: Not a Class 1 or Class 2 material; and contains less than 600 ppm lead. 2) Requires that on and after September 1, 2007, a person shall not manufacture, ship, sell or offer for sale children's jewelry for retail sale in California unless the AB 1681 Page 3 jewelry is made entirely from one or more of the following materials: a) Nonmetallic materials that are Class 1 materials; b) Nonmetallic materials that are Class 2 materials. c) Metal components in and coatings on children's jewelry must contain less than 600 ppm of lead. d) Glass or crystal decorative components that weigh in total no more than 1.0 gram, excluding any glass or crystal decorative component that contains less than 200 ppm lead by weight and has no intentionally added lead. e) Printing inks or ceramic glazes that contain less than 600 ppm lead. f) Class 3 materials that contain less than 200 ppm. COMMENTS : 1) Purpose of Bill . The purpose of this bill is to reduce child and adult exposure to lead. This bill codifies the "global" settlement reached in a Proposition 65 case between the Center for Environmental Health, the Attorney General, and a group of retailer and wholesaler defendants, which sets a lead content standard for all types of jewelry imported into, and sold and distributed in California. Without the enactment of a strict lead-content standard, jewelry containing hazardous levels of lead will continue to be marketed to the public and to children. 2) Background . In June, 2004, the California Attorney General filed a lawsuit against numerous California-based retailers alleging they violated Proposition 65 by failing to warn consumers about the health risks of exposure to the lead contained in certain jewelry. The state's testing found high levels of lead in both the metallic and nonmetallic components of the jewelry targeted in the case. The amounts were well above the level that triggers the requirement to provide a Proposition 65 warning to consumers. In December, 2004 the retailers agreed to AB 1681 Page 4 mediate. The settlement was reached in January, 2006. 3) Lead: Recognized Hazards . Lead has been listed under Proposition 65 since 1987 as a substance that can cause reproductive damage and birth defects, and has been on the list of chemicals known to cause cancer since 1992. Lead is a neurotoxin and is particularly hazardous to children. Lead in young children even at very minute levels can result in reduced IQ, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, behavioral problems, stunted growth, impaired hearing, and kidney damage. The Centers for Disease Control states there is no evidence of a threshold below which adverse effects are not experienced. Despite wide and longstanding recognition of lead's toxicity, the jewelry industry continues to knowingly manufacture, import, and distribute jewelry products, especially inexpensive jewelry marketed to children, which can contain as much as 100 percent lead. 4) Leaded Jewelry: Current Hazards . A recent study by the University of North Carolina examined 311 jewelry items that were purchased from California retailers. Of these items, 123 were found to contain more than 50 percent lead by weight; 36 of these 123 samples contained more than 75 percent lead. 5) Inadequate Federal Law . In the absence of strict lead-content standards, regulatory agencies have had to use the tools available to them - labeling requirements and product recalls - to control the use of lead by the jewelry industry. As a result, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has overseen six recalls involving over 150 million pieces of lead-containing jewelry over the last three years. The CPSC has recently developed lead-content guidelines for jewelry. These guidelines, however, are not requirements, or standards that can be strictly enforced by the Commission. Current state and federal laws regarding lead in products such as jewelry impose a lead standard that is exposure, not AB 1681 Page 5 content based. (The CPSC recently established guidelines for lead in jewelry, but these guidelines do not have the force of regulation or law.) Therefore, jewelry manufacturers can make a piece of jewelry that consists almost entirely of lead, but is covered with a coating. 6) Should there be lead in children's jewelry at any level? The premise of this proposed law is that risk assessment should serve as a basis for making environmental health decisions - a premise that is being increasingly challenged as not a sound basis for the protection of public, and especially children's, health. For many health advocates, the concept that some level of risk is acceptable or manageable is being questioned as posing unnecessary risks for consumers and their children, workers, and the environment generally. In the case of lead in jewelry, members of the health community argue that the goal should be to have no lead present in the final product. In general, when there are better/safer alternatives, there should be a zero risk policy for using the more hazardous chemicals. In this case, lead, for which we know that extremely low doses can cause harm to children and the developing fetus, there is no level of risk that is or should be acceptable in consumer products where there is the potential for any level of exposure in children. While the Attorney General has done a notable task in hastening the removal of lead from jewelry, members of the Committee should carefully consider whether to address a timeframe beyond the terms of the settlement by phasing-out lead in children's jewelry. One option may be to follow upon the terms of the settlement by requiring a ban on children's jewelry by a date certain, e.g., January 2010. In this manner, the settlement could be placed in what may be a more compelling policy - the phase-out of a known health hazard that is especially threatening to children. SOURCE : The Center for Environmental Health SUPPORT : A New Way of Life Reentry Project California Communities Against Toxics Environment California Healthy Children Organizing Project AB 1681 Page 6 The Girl Scouts The Sierra Club Women's Mountain Passages Youth for Change OPPOSITION : None on file