Dive Brief:
- More than a quarter of fashion accessories sampled in 2022 from two large off-price retailers in California contained high qualities of lead, according to a new report from Center for Environmental Health.
- The nonprofit group, which purchased and tested both natural and faux-leather belts, handbags, wallets and shoes from Ross and Burlington stores, said nearly all of the contaminated products were faux.
- CEH has been screening leather and faux-leather accessories for lead since 2009. The report said the group has used California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, also known as Proposition 65, to negotiate agreements with over 200 companies to eliminate “all but trace levels of lead” in the category, but added that the problem persists at discount stores such as Burlington, Ross, Marshalls and Nordstrom Rack.
Dive Insight:
Lead is a toxin that can cause reproductive problems, cardiovascular and kidney damage, and permanent neurological damage, and there is no level of exposure that is known to be without harmful effects, according to the World Health Organization. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines it as a probable carcinogen, and the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission limits the lead content of children’s products to 100 ppm.
Over the past ten years, CEH said it has notified Burlington and Ross more than 300 times that they were selling specific fashion accessories containing elevated levels of lead, the report said.
Burlington didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We do not manufacture fashion accessories, but we maintain strict product safety requirements,” a Ross corporate spokesperson said in an email to Fashion Dive. “We have policies in place that require our suppliers to meet applicable product safety and labeling standards that are established by government regulators. Those include standards related to lead content. If we learn of allegations that our products are not in compliance, we investigate and take prompt action.”
For this report, CEH tested 1,950 items from 63 Ross stores and 15 Burlington stores and found that 28% of accessories from Ross and 25% of accessories from Burlington contained lead in quantities of more than 300 ppm.
Caitlin Moher, research manager at CEH and one of the report’s authors, wrote in an email to Fashion Dive that lead is sometimes part of the manufacturing process when it comes to faux-leather.
“Faux leather is often made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and lead can be used as a stabilizer in PVC production,” Moher said.
While some of the stores that CEH contacted regarding this issue eventually phased out the products, Ross and Burlington responded to notices from the CEH by pulling the individual products from shelves, but failed to address the issues “on a systemic level to prevent lead-containing products from being stocked on their shelves and sold to consumers in the first place,” Moher said.
