Product Survey Results, 2013

Published on November 15, 2013

Chemical hazards found in kitchen, exercise equipment, jewelry, consumer electronics, building and outdoor products

Some retailers responding, others remain silent

November 15, 2013 —  In the last few months HealthyStuff.org has conducted an informal study of a wide variety products types with a goal of assessing what hazards are still out there in the marketplace. We've analyzed 150 products for lead and metals, hazardous flame retardants and phthtalate plasticizers. What we found is that products with chemical hazards are still scattered throughout the economy, in a wide variety of types of products. We found cooking utensils with brominate flame retardants, lead in jewelry and hazardous plasticizers in flooring and exercise equipment. All of this show we still have work to do.

The good news is we now have major retailers, including Walmart and Target, stepping forward with proactive policies to address many of these chemical hazards. The bad news is we still have most retailers without publicly announced, proactive policies eliminate chemical hazards from the products they sell.

That’s where you come in. We believe that retailers and manufacturers should disclose the chemical composition and hazards of the products they sell. You can take action now and tell retailers you want chemical hazard disclosure and for them eliminate the worse of known hazards now.