Vinyl Blinds Can Poison Children, Says Agency Vinyl Breaks Down In Sunlight, Creates Dangerous Lead Coating
Parents have long been warned about the lead hazards of old paints. Now, public health investigators have identified a new and unexpected lead poisoning hazard in homes: vinyl miniblinds.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission said Monday that families with children under 6 should remove from their homes any non-glossy vinyl miniblinds.
The agency said the blinds deteriorate from exposure to sunlight and heat, forming a lead dust on the surface.
“Washing of the blinds does not work,” said CPSC spokeswoman Kathleen Begala.
In conjunction with the CPSC’s advisory, Home Depot announced Monday that it had pulled all vinyl blinds from its shelves and would offer refunds to consumers.
Young children can ingest the dust by touching the blinds and then putting their hands in their mouths or eating without washing their hands.
Inhaling or swallowing even tiny amounts of lead can cause brain damage, lifelong learning disabilities and behavioral problems for children under 6.
The CPSC said the lead level found on some blinds was so high that a child ingesting dust from less than 1 square inch of blind a day could have dangerously high blood lead levels after two weeks to a month.
The North Carolina health department has sampled more than 100 sets of blinds since January and found about 90 percent had lead dust levels above federal standards. About 15 percent had levels 10 to more than 100 times above federal standards.
“It was an extreme surprise,” said Ed Norman, an epidemiologist with the department. “When I got the first of the samples that were extremely high I thought it was just a fluke.”
Lead is used to stabilize the plastic in some 25 million vinyl blinds imported annually from China, Taiwan, Mexico and Indonesia, according to the CPSC.
In response to pressure from the commission, manufacturers voluntarily agreed to stop importing blinds that are made with lead. Products labeled “non-leaded” or “new formulation” should be on shelves beginning in July and should completely replace the leaded blinds by September.
The discovery of the lead problem was a detective story that began with a 1-year-old boy with lead poisoning in San Luis, Ariz.
In May 1994, during a routine screening under the state’s childhood health initiative, the boy was found to have a lead blood level of 20.2 micrograms per deciliter - twice the level of 10 micrograms danger level.
Over the next seven months, Arizona officials visited the child’s home three times, testing the paint, the water and the soil outside but - aside from a desk with lead-based paint - finding no obvious source. Meanwhile the child’s blood lead level rose as high as 46.
Most baffling, according to epidemiologist Patty Arreola, was the fact that the child lived in a mobile home. “The interior of a mobile home is all paneling and Formica,” Arreola said. “There wouldn’t be any lead-based paint.”
Finally, in January 1995, Arreola and a lead investigator visited again, asking the boy’s mother how he spent his time in each room. In the boy’s bedroom, the mother said, he looks outside the window through the blinds.
“We put a lead check swab on the blinds and it turned bright pink. Then we put it on our hands and they turned pink,” Arreola said.
In December 1995, Arizona officials issued a public advisory after identifying miniblinds as the source of a second poisoning, a child living in an apartment in Phoenix.
Prompted by Arizona’s advisory, North Carolina began field testing miniblinds in all lead poisoning investigations in January.
It wasn’t until CPSC began investigating this spring, however, that officials proved that the source of the lead dust was the blinds themselves.
Using electron microscopes at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Army’s Aberdeen Test Center, scientists confirmed that as the plastic deteriorated, dust formed on the surface of the slats.
xxxx GETTING THE LEAD OUT In response to pressure from the commission, manufacturers voluntarily agreed to stop importing blinds that are made with lead. Products labeled “non-leaded” or “new formulation” should be on shelves beginning in July and should completely replace the leaded blinds by September.