Discount Stores pull tainted Halloween Items
Thursday, October 4th, 2007Three specific items sold at Dollar General and Family Dollar discount stores have tested positive for lead up to 65 times (3.9 percent lead by volume) the U.S. allowable level (.06 percent lead by volume). An Ashland University chemistry professor, Jeffrey Weidenhamer, recently bought several Halloween seasonal toys that are Chinese imports from Dollar General and Family Dollar stores around Ashland at the request of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. Lead, which can be ingested if paint flakes off or young children chew on a painted surface, can stunt a child’s development or lead to death.
* A Frankenstein tumbler, a green plastic cup with a Frankenstein-like face.
* A plastic trick-or-treat bucket for carrying candy that looks like a skull.
* A plastic trick-or-treat bucket for carrying candy that looks like a witch.
Weidenhamer on Friday alerted the Consumer Product Safety Commission to his findings. The agency quickly notified Dollar General, “and we sent a message to our stores via satellite to stop sales” of the cup, said Tawn Earnest, senior director of corporate communications for the Tennessee-based chain. She said the store also stopped selling the plastic skull-shaped
bucket.Dollar General already had a “very rigorous lead testing protocol,” Earnest said. It included testing at the factory by a third party. Weidenhamer’s finding on the cups was especially surprising because Dollar General had done similar tests in China and found the cups to be safe.
Her company has concluded “that the supplier used different paint sources,” so the lead content changed with the paint supplies, she said.
Family Dollar says it pulled the witch buckets from stores on Tuesday and has sent a sample for independent testing. Spokesman Joshua Braverman said the chain tests products randomly. Family Dollar got the buckets from a vendor and did not have an exclusive agreement to carry them, “so there are others out there,” Braverman said.
Please be cautious of purchasing Halloween candy buckets that are shaped as witches, as Family Dollar was not the only merchant that likely will carry the product.
SOURCE: Cleveland.com
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