Children’s Drinking Glasses Contain Lead and Cadmium, Tests Find

Drinking glasses decorated with cartoon superheroes and movie characters were found to contain the dangerous chemical cadmium and levels of lead lead far exceed federal safety standards for children’s products, according to a laboratory analysis commissioned by the Associated Press. The enamel used to decorate the glasses — which are produced in China and sold at the Warner Brothers store in Burbank, Calif. — contained 16 to 30.2 percent lead, far exceeding the 0.03 percent standard, according to the AP. The laboratory analysis also found that the glasses contained the toxic metal cadmium, although there are currently no federal standards for safe limits of that sybstance. In separate tests, the AP found that several other types of decorative glasses targeted to children also shed small but notable levels of lead or cadmium after regular handling. After learning of the results, Coca-Cola, the producer of one of the decorative glasses, voluntarily recalled 88,000 glasses.