Now they may be facing a new, unwelcome variable when it comes to picking a back-to-school lunch box: lead.
Since last summer, parents have been getting mixed messages about whether some children’s soft-sided lunch boxes contain lead.
In August 2005, a California-based environmental group claimed to have found elevated lead levels in dozens of vinyl-lined lunch boxes.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission subsequently did tests of its own but did not find a hazard. However, those tests prompted the Food and Drug Administration to recently issue a letter which raised the prospect that some children’s lunch boxes contain lead.
While both federal entities agree that the risks are minimal, some stores — including Wal-Mart — have responded by yanking some lunch boxes. Some manufacturers have added “lead-free” or “lead-safe” labels to their products.
Tests haven’t been done on adult lunch boxes which may have similar linings. Children are susceptible to long-lasting physical and development delays from lead exposure.
“The soft (lunch boxes) are great. I can’t imagine they have lead in them. I would want to know that,” said Karen Bernhardt, who has a third-grader and a fifth-grader at Reidenbaugh Elementary School.
“If there is any lead in it, it is unacceptable,” she said.
The Oakland-based Center for Environmental Health first raised the issued of lead in children’s lunch boxes last summer when they announced a suit they filed against some makers and retailers of vinyl lunch boxes.
The Center conducted tests on lunch boxes, finding some with harmful levels of lead in their vinyl linings. Some manufacturers may add the metal to polyvinyl chloride (PVC), the plastic used in many lunch box liners, as a stabilizing agent or pigment.
The Consumer Products Safety Commission, however, concluded from tests of its own on 60 children’s lunch boxes that none had dangerous levels of lead.
“In most cases, children would have to rub their lunch box and then lick their hands more than 600 times every day, for about 15-30 days, in order for the lunch box to present a health hazard,” the CSPC reported.
Yet the mere chance of lead in children’s lunch boxes prompted the July 20 FDA warning letter, although an FDA official said there is no cause for alarm.
“We don’t necessarily have a public health risk from this yet,” said Mitchell Cheeseman, associate director of the FDA Office of Food Additive Safety. “The purpose of our letter was to alert manufacturers and suppliers to the possibility of FDA jurisdiction.”
He said the potential problem was not with all PVC-lined plastic lunch boxes, but only with the minority of them that may have added lead.
“There is nothing wrong with PVC,” Cheeseman said.
Because many foods in lunch boxes are already wrapped, he added, there is less risk that lead will migrate to the food.
The Center for Environmental Health recommends concerned parents test their child’s lunch box with a hand-held lead testing kit, which is available at some hardware stores. It is not possible to tell by a lunch box’s appearance whether it contains lead.
The center has information about the lead-testing kits on their Web site: www.cehca.org. 