Health Canada Finds Lead In Children's Jewelry Products

Health Canada has issued an advisory today warning consumers that some children's jewelry products sold in Canada have been found to contain excessively high levels of lead.

CBC reports that two days ago, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission released a similar advisory where toxic cadmium was found in cheap jewelry imported from China. Cadmium, a carcinogen and heavy metal more toxic than lead can cause  harmful effects on the development of children as well as children's behaviour, even at low amounts. Walmart and Claires across North America were found to be selling this low-priced jewelry.

In the AP investigation, 103 pieces of low-priced children's jewelry were tested for cadmium. In 12 of the items, the toxic metal made up at least 10 per cent of the metal components and in some cases, as much as 90 per cent.

Health and consumer agencies in Canada and the U.S. are concerned that cadmium, which is a carcinogen, might be increasingly substituted for lead in inexpensive jewelry.

Health Canada Safety Tips

• Check your child's jewelry. If you suspect it may contain lead or cadmium, throw it out in your regular household waste.
• Do not give young children adult jewelry to wear or play with; it may contain lead or cadmium.
• Do not allow children to suck or chew on any jewelry.
• If your child has sucked or chewed regularly on jewelry which you think may contain lead or cadmium, ask your doctor to test your child's blood for lead or cadmium.
• A child who swallows a jewellery item containing lead or cadmium is at high risk of developing serious health effects. Contact an emergency medical service if you believe your child has swallowed an item containing lead or cadmium.
• Check for product recalls by contacting the retailer, manufacturer or Health Canada.

 You can find descriptions and photos of four jewelry items that have been identified during the routine testing. Please visit Health Canada for more information.

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Recall: Amby Baby Motion Beds/Hammocks For Infant Suffocation

Health Canada is advising parents and caregivers to immediately stop using Amby Motion Beds, due to a potential suffocation hazard. They say the "inclined sleeping surface increases the risk of the infant rolling and becoming wedged in a position where they can no longer breathe."

Two infants have died from suffocation in the United States while using these products and three other incidents have been reported. One resulted in an injury from metal fragments falling into the infant's eye. The other two incidents did not result in injury.

The Amby Baby Motion Bed consists of a steel frame and a fabric hammock which are connected by a large spring and a metal crossbar. These hammocks were only sold online through the company's website.

To date, Health Canada has not received any reports of incidents or injuries in Canada related to these products. Nevertheless, these products should be disassembled and disposed of in such a way that they cannot be used again. Consumers are also encouraged to notify Health Canada should they find these products for sale.

Health Canada is recommending that children under six years of age not be placed in any hammock as infants and young children are susceptible to considerable fall, strangulation, and suffocation hazards. For more information, please see Health Canada's Policy Statement for Hammocks Intended To Be Used By Infants And Young Children.

Health Canada reminds parents and caregivers that the safest place for an infant to sleep is alone in a crib. For more information on crib requirements in Canada, as well as the safe use of cribs, see Health Canada's Crib Safety Booklet. For more information on safe sleeping practices for infants, see Health Canada's Consumer Information - Safe Sleep Practices for Infants.

For further information, consumers may contact Health Canada's Consumer Product Safety Bureau by phone toll-free at 1-866-662-0666, or by email at cps-spc@hc-sc.gc.ca (if contacting via e-mail, please indicate the province or territory from which you are corresponding).

Canada's dangerously high salt intake is a serious concern

A new article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal is saying that Canada's dangerously high salt intake is "One of our most urgent public health matters."

80 percent of the sodium in the diet of Canadian's comes from processed food. 30 percent of the high blood pressure cases in adults can be traced to the high sodium diets we consume.

"Although voluntary action by the food industry may be the preferred option to initiate sodium reduction, its absence calls for governments to use their regulatory capacity to bring about change," the article urges.

"I think the government need to increase the pressure on the food industry to voluntarily reduce the sodium they're adding," Willis told Canada AM. "And that needs to be backed up by regulation and legislation to make sure there's an even playing field for all of the companies."

Canada also needs "a massive public education campaign" to inform Canadians on how dietary sodium causes disease and how simple it is to cut our intake. Doctors, too, should be trained in counseling patients about reducing sodium.

Willis would also like to see changes to food labels, so that people can more easily understand which foods are higher in sodium.

While the recommended intake in Canada is set at 1,500 mg a day for people between the ages of nine and 50, the average daily intake in Canada is more than double the recommended level.

If Canadians could cut their sodium intake to the recommended levels, we would decrease the rates of high blood pressure by 30 per cent, cut high blood pressure-related heart attacks and strokes by 8.6 per cent and save about $2 billion annually in health care costs, the analysis says.

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"BPA free" leading brand baby bottle contains high traces of the toxic chemical

Health Canada recently tested "BPA free" baby bottles and discovered that Dr. Brown's Natural flow bottles showed trace amounts of 0.9 parts per billion after being in water for 238 hours at 60 C.

Dr. Brown's Natural flow bottle has been one of the leading names in baby bottles over the past five years.

Other "BPA-free" brands with detectable levels under these conditions, ranging from 0.002 to 0.025 part per billion, included Gerber, Medela, Whittlestone, Nuby and a house brand sold at a dollar store in Canada.

There were no detectable levels found in the BornFree and Thinkbaby bottles after 238 hours. The Green to Grow brand was not analyzed at the 238-hour mark after Health Canada found no detectable levels after 94 hours.

Thinkbaby bottles showed no detectable levels after two hours, 22 hours and 94 hours, while BornFree showed minute traces at the two-hour mark, but came up completely clean after that.

Health Canada did not include the Adiri Natural Nurser bottle — pitched to parents as "100 per cent BPA free" — in the water migration survey.

Surprisingly in a second test using 10 % ethanol, Health Canada found small levels of the chemical in one of the four time-specified readings. Those brands were Adiri, Dr. Brown and Whittlestone.

Shelley Aronoff, co-founder of Green to Grow, said in the case of her branded bottles, the results just don't add up.

While Health Canada found minute trace — 0.0014 part per billion — after two hours at 60 C, there were no detectable levels after 94 hours. All studies involving polycarbonate bottles show an upward tick in leaching over time and with higher temperatures.

"I just don't know how you could go from detected to non-detected," Aronoff said Friday. "I just don't have faith in these test results."

Health Canada does say however that the trace amounts should be of no concern to parents.

"Bottles made from non-polycarbonate plastic may contain very low level, trace amounts of BPA resulting from cross-contamination caused by the ubiquitous nature of BPA. Detection of BPA in the non-polycarbonate plastic bottles may also be due to improved sensitivity of instruments in laboratories. There is often no such thing as absolute zero due to cross-contamination and prevalence of many substances in the natural environment," Health Canada told CBC News in an email.

According to records released under the Access to Information Act, these test results surprised all of the Health Canada scientists involved. No kidding! A company who claims their product is "BPA free" when it in fact is not, is either not paying enough attention to the production or is putting out false claims.

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