Be informed: Last year, lead in kids’ jewelry became a big issue. Now, news reports indicate that some imported children’s jewelry is contaminated with cadmium. Here’s a briefing:
Starting in January, reports began emerging that cadmium, a known carcinogen, was detected in imported kids’ jewelry. (See this report. as well as
one of the earliest reports that showed up on the web.)
This is surprising. Especially since lead-tainted imported goods have gotten so much attention, the materials of choice for white metal castings are zinc and tin. Both antimony and tin are used for pewter. (For example, Tierracast in the US uses the foodsafe alloy of antimony and tin known as “Britannia Metal.”)
Cadmium seems a truly odd choice in casting jewelry components. Granted, it isn’t lead, a material that’s become pretty unacceptable in the US market. At the time of the emerging cadmium reports, Rings & Things already had an existing request in with Chinese suppliers for cast items to be made without lead or nickel content, using zinc instead.
But a comparison of prices of all these metals shows why cadmium is such a strange choice to include in low-priced cast components. It’s 10 times the price of zinc or lead.
(We hear rumors of sterling-silver produced with cadmium, with the resulting material being below the standards for sterling. That adulteration makes sense. Sterling silver is expensive enough to make cadmium an attractive addition, but ‘white metal’ / base metal castings would actually be made more expensive by added cadmium.)
Recent market prices for the above-mentioned metals (in US dollars):
Lead $1.17 a pound
Zinc $1.18 / lb
Tin $8.10 / lb
Cadmium $12.00 / lb
Rings & Things has had a variety of items tested for cadmium. It appears there are extremely tiny (trace) amounts. In three-fourths of the items, these amounts are in fact below the testing limit of less than 16 ppm (which is 0.0016%); one-fourth tested slightly higher, at 19 ppm (0.0019%.)
In summary, we advise keeping posted on any further media stories about possible cadmium content in imported jewelry parts. R&T has done some testing, and found no cadmium danger in our items.
Finally, we remind our customers, as we do in regard to lead content, that our products are not intended for use in children’s jewelry.
