Kmart Corp said it will remove all costume jewelry labeled as "lead free" and sold throughout the US after some of the pieces were found to contain the metal.
Most of the jewelry is part of the Accessories brand line, said Kimberly Freely, a spokeswoman for Sears Holdings Corp, Kmart's parent company, in an interview on Saturday from Chicago.
"We removed the jewelry from our Kmart stores nationwide out of an abundance of caution and to keep consumers from being confused," Freely said.
One charm tested by Karla Johnson, manager of the Lead-Safe and Healthy Homes Program of the Marion County Health Department in Indiana, was found to be 52 percent lead.
Johnson discovered the lead in the jewelry after she bought her 18-month-old daughter earrings and a necklace at her local Kmart about a month ago. She tested the jewelry with a hand-held X-ray fluorescent lead analyzer, provided by her job.
As soon as Johnson learned about the lead content she said she contacted Kmart.
When she didn't get a response, she enlisted the help of her friend Janet McCabe, the executive director of Improving Kids' Environment, a nonprofit group that works on lead poisoning and other issues affecting children.
"There's just been so much in the news about high lead content in children's toys and products, we had to do something," McCabe said in an interview.
McCabe bought about 20 sets of jewelry in another Kmart in Indianapolis, some labeled "lead free" and others not. The "lead-free" jewelry had more lead, on average, than the unmarked sets.
Kmart has 1,416 stores in 49 states, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, according to the company's Web site.
The New York Times reported on the lead in the jewelry earlier.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
RSS