Georgia

Georgia senator wants answers from retailers after learning lead was found in baby products

By Justin Gray, WSB-TV
By Justin Gray, WSB-TV

GEORGIA — Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff is demanding answers after sippy cups sold by major retailers like Whole Foods and Amazon were found to contain lead.

FDA says no level of lead is safe or legal in children’s products.

The stainless steel bottles and sippy cups are made by Green Sprouts. The company promotes products as coming from “safer materials” for “natural parenting.”

But the Consumer Product Safety Commission says a part of the cup contains lead. There have been at least seven documented cases of that lead part breaking free, which would expose children to potential lead poisoning.

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The news of that recall is why Ossoff tells Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray that he is launching an investigation.

Ossoff is sending a letter to Green Sprouts, demanding answers. But he is also sending similar letters to other major manufacturers of children’s products asking about lead in their products.

“I’m demanding answers from Green Sprouts, the company that produced these sippy cups and casting a wider net to determine if there may be other risks lurking in other products,” Ossoff told Gray.

The lead recall is not an isolated problem.

Last month, more than 80,000 kid’s clothing sets sold at stores including Ross and T.J. Maxx, and featuring characters like Minnie Mouse, Pooh Bear, and baby Yoda, were also recalled for lead poisoning risk. Lead was found in textile ink.

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“It does not matter if somebody buys a high-end baby product in a high-end store or buys it from a dollar store. Everybody deserves the same protection. It shouldn’t be too much to ask for no lead in children’s products, but apparently, it is and that’s why we need oversight,” said Olga Naidenko, a scientist at the Environmental Working Group.

She says FDA rules banning lead in any children’s product need to be enforced.

“The use of terms such as ‘natural,’ ‘good for you,’ ‘good for the baby’ — that means nothing,” Naidenko said.

Green Sprouts did not respond to our request for comment.

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But in a post on Instagram, it wrote: “Had we been aware that a component containing lead in these products could become accessible, we wouldn’t have put them on the market; now that we know, we are voluntarily recalling these products.”

Ossoff says the failure of companies and regulators to ensure safe products, has put parents in an impossible situation.

“We rely upon companies to honestly represent the health and safety of their products and we rely on regulators like the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ensure they are telling the truth. Here, we clearly had a failure. We need to see if there are other failures to protect our kids from risk to their health,” Ossoff said.

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