California Nixes Cadmium Silver Jewelry

As Sterling Canyon reported last October, the California Center for Environmental Health sued a number of retailers over their peddling of Cadmium laced childrens jewelry.  All of the jewelry is made in China, and today the suit was settled with Tween, owned by Suffern, N.Y.-based Ascena Retail Group Inc. which runs nearly 900 Justice stores, many of them in California.  Terms of the agreement state that no jewelry containing over 0.03 percent may be sold in California. 

According to the CNBC report, Michael Green, executive director of the Center for Environmental Health, said in a statement that Tween is “leading the industry in adopting this health protective standard for their jewelry customers.”  “The company responsibly recalled its cadmium-containing jewelry and went beyond California law in agreeing to instruct its suppliers to provide Tween with reformulated jewelry on a nationwide basis,” he said. “We expect other companies to follow suit, for the sake of their customers’ health.”  

The question remains as to why parents would buy cheap Chinese jewelry for their children. Ignorance may be a reason.  Or perhaps these parents live under rocks and are not aware of the poor product reputation China has created for itself.  One of the reasons why Sterling Canyon offers the finest Silver jewelry all made in the United States or Europe.