“I applaud the Consumer Product Safety Commission for issuing a national recall of the Cra-Z-Art products containing high lead levels that my office found on store shelves in New York. Manufacturers, importers, distributors, and retailers all have a responsibility to ensure that products intended for use by children are safe. My office’s findings are symptomatic of a potentially larger problem with imported children’s products that still remains to be addressed. For this reason, my office will continue its investigation into how these products breached the safety net that is supposed to protect our kids from exposure to unsafe levels of lead and other dangerous substances. No parents should have to worry that a toy they buy will poison their child.”
On April 22, Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced that his office had discovered high lead levels in parts of several children’s Cra-Z-Art products supplied by LaRose Industries and sold in K-Mart, Target, and Toys-R-Us stores in several areas of New York.
Tests commissioned by Attorney General Schneiderman’s office and performed by a CPSC-accepted laboratory revealed that the wristbands associated with several Cra-Z-Art children’s products contained lead at levels of 120 to 980 parts per million (ppm) – levels that are up to almost 10-times the 100 ppm limit established under the federal Consumer Product Safety Act for children’s products.
Based on these findings, Attorney General Schneiderman called on the CPSC to require a national recall of these products. He also called on LaRose, K-Mart, Target, Toys-R-Us, and other retailers of Cra-Z-Art products in New York – including Amazon and Walmart – to immediately remove the products found to contain high lead levels, as well as any similar Cra-Z-Art products, from their shelves in this state.
Attorney General Schneiderman has also launched an investigation to determine how these children’s products containing high lead levels reached store shelves in New York. The Attorney General is seeking information on companies’ internal practices and procedures for keeping toxic chemicals out of children’s products, and their compliance with state and federal laws governing the safety of children’s products.
