Check Your Kids' Stuff

Popular kids’ trinkets loaded with toxic metal
Seems to be the cheaper trinkets, like you'd find at Wal-Mart or girls boutiques, like Claire's. Unfortunately, my girls like both places....

Here's the low-down on cadmium, if you're like me and aren't up on this stuff (from Wikipedia):

Cadmium (pronounced /ˈkædmiəm/, KAD-mee-əm) is a chemical element with the symbol Cd and atomic number 48. The soft, bluish-white transition metal is chemically similar to the two other metals in group 12, zinc and mercury. Similar to zinc it prefers oxidation state +2 in most of its compounds and similar to mercury it shows a low melting point for a transition metal. Cadmium is a relatively abundant element. Cadmium was discovered in 1817 by Friedrich Stromeyer as an impurity in zinc carbonate.

Cadmium occurs as a minor component in most zinc ores and therefore is a by-product of zinc production. Cadmium was for a long time used as pigment and for corrosion resistant plating on steel. Cadmium compounds were used to stabilize plastic. With the exception of its use in nickel-cadmium batteries, the use of cadmium is generally decreasing in all other applications. This decrease is due to the high toxicity and carcinogenicity of cadmium and the associated health and environmental concerns. Although cadmium is toxic, one enzyme, a carbonic anhydrase with cadmium as reactive centre has been discovered.