In the past 10 years, Canadians have bought a lot of products containing dangerous amounts of lead: from blinds to soft plastic toys to children's raincoats.

Many of those products are intended specifically for children. That's a big worry, because few materials hurt children as much as lead. It can delay intellectual development, cause children to behave aggressively, and aggravate health problems later in life.

You'd think that would be enough to get the lead out of products intended for children. Yet, it may be surprising to find that there are still more sources of lead in toys and in jewellery sold for children.

Three years ago, seven-year-old Lyndsey Svendsen of Calgary came very close to suffering from lead poisoning. It was all because of a little pendant that was part of a necklace.

Like many children, small objects in Lyndsey's hands sometimes wound up in her mouth. So it was with the pendant.

When the necklace broke, Lyndsey's father, Norm, noticed what he thought was lead. A quick test from a commercial kit confirmed their fears.

Paediatrician Dr. Starr Cardwell found that Lyndsey was just a hair away from being classified a lead poisoned child.

"I would describe this as an eye-opener," Cardwell told Marketplace. "An eye-opener that has me concerned about the health of children across the country."

"Health Canada has been on this," says Lesley Svendsen. "They picked up the necklace and sent it to their lab and the results came back and said it was pure"

For three months, Lyndsey underwent regular blood tests to monitor her lead levels.

Lyndsey's mother, Lesley, thought her daughter could not be an isolated incident. The jewellery her daughter was playing with was widely available across the country.

Lesley Svendsen contacted the local Calgary media. She did interviews for radio and television and let Health Canada know about her concerns.

"Health Canada has been on this," Lesley Svendsen said. "Initially they came and picked up the necklace and sent it to their lab and the results came back and said it was pure."

It was pure — 100 per cent lead.

Not an isolated case

"We had no reason to believe it was an isolated case," says Health Canada's Charles Ethier

"We had no reason to believe it was an isolated case," Health Canada's Charles Ethier told Marketplace. "That's one of the reasons that prompted us to carry on with the survey, to see if there were other products out there that might contain lead."

Ethier is the Director General of Health Canada's Product Safety Program. He sent members of his department shopping. They bought 95 pieces of jewellery intended for children. More than two-thirds contained between 50 and 100 per cent lead.

The worry is what that could do to children, especially since they love to put things in their mouths. That's one of the most harmful ways of ingesting lead.

It doesn't take much lead to start causing problems in children, says Kathleen Cooper, a senior researcher with the Canadian Environmental Law Association and a specialist on lead.

"Just by way of comparison," Cooper told Marketplace, "the amount of lead that can start to cause developmental problems in a child's brain is the amount of lead you can put on the head of pin."

Health Canada agrees that it takes very little lead to cause problems for children.

Marketplace asked to see the list of 95 pieces of toy jewellery the department tested, so we could report which ones had high levels of lead.

Health Canada's Charles Ethier declined.

"I would be concerned about providing a list," Ethier told Marketplace, "because that might give consumers a false sense of security that it was limited only to that list of jewellery".

Ethier recommends that parents be cautious about all types of jewellery that might be inexpensive or that might appear to contain lead.

"If there are specific items that consumers want to know about," Ethier added, "they can contact us and we'll them whether that was something that we tested but to give out a list would not accomplish the objective that we're trying to meet."

Ethier says his department can quickly confirm whether the jewellery you are worried about contains lead — if it's one of the 95 products they tested. Otherwise Health Canada might ask you to send in the product and they will test it.

We took Ethier up on his offer and called Health Canada's Toronto office to see if products we'd seen on store shelves were on their lead list.

The Health Canada representative was unable to give us specific information.

"I wouldn't be able to tell you," he said over the phone. "Some would have lots of lead, some would have nothing. Our warning said to avoid the product all together. Because we couldn't identify specifics."

Health Canada asks industry to restrict lead levels

Health Canada has asked the jewellery industry to keep lead levels down to 65 parts per million.

Health Canada says that number allows for lead that is pervasive in our world. Anything at or below 65 PPM shows that there is no additional lead added to the product.

With that in mind, Marketplace set out to see if there is still jewellery on the shelves meant for children, containing lead levels higher than 65 parts per million.

We bought two pieces of jewellery, both from Toys R Us:

• a heart pendant necklace: lead content of 80,287 parts per million
• a candy pendant necklace: lead content 88,954 parts per million

Both products had the name Bevy's Babes on the tag. We contacted Toys R Us and informed them of our test results.

The chain sent the following reply by e-mail:

"Based on the information you have provided us with today … we have pulled that product off the floor."

We also took our results to Health Canada's Charles Ethier — and asked him why these items could still be on Canadian store shelves.

"There is nothing preventing the sale of those particular items at the retail level," Ethier explained. "Those products are not regulated and there is nothing preventing their sale."

Jewellery isn't the only children's product made with lead. Over the past 10 years many products for children have been found to have lead in them. Health Canada says it will begin testing for lead in toys this summer. We wanted to see what was available.

Marketplace tests toys and novelties

Marketplace tested ten toys and novelty items. The toys we bought came back with very low levels of lead. But the novelty items didn't fare so well.

• key chain — 165 PPM
  
• paint on some pencils — 289 PPM
  
• more results

For several years, Health Canada has been saying it will soon have a new policy, maybe even a law banning lead from products especially those for children.

Ethier says it has been put off until at least 2002. He stresses that Canada needs a regulation prohibiting intentional addition of lead in consumer products for household use. He says the law is needed now.

"Like any regulatory process it's very long, it's very complicated," Ethier notes. "It's a step by step process that we have to go through."

Health Canada does have the power to get hazardous consumer products off the shelves. The department announces many recalls and advisories — which are reported on this website. But -except in very rare circumstances- the recall process is voluntary.

The federal government lacks the power to demand that an industry recall consumer products. It can recall medical devices and a few other things. With respect to consumer products it's not a recall, it's a warning or an advisory.

For the Svendsens their story did not end with the first pendant.

"It was a year later, she was at a birthday party with seven little 6 year old girls," Lesley Svendsen recalls. "They received their treat bags at the end of the party. I was looking through their treat bags and out comes this necklace."

It too was made of lead.

Dr. Cardwell has that necklace in her files now. One indication that a pendant may be made of lead is you can write with it. Lesley Svendsen wants change from the retail end. She has this plea for the industry:

"I beg of you, please stop putting this stuff on your shelves. These are children. How dare they?"