U.S. – New York Approves Lead-containing Jewelry Law

Vol. 1136 | 28 Feb 2020

In December 2019, New York Governor Cuomo signed into law Senate bill 4046 restricting the lead content in children’s jewelry. Intended to safeguard public health, the law is meant to provide safe limits for amounts of lead found in children’s jewelry following random jewelry sampling by the state of New York, which yielded some products containing almost 60,000 ppm of lead.

A child, as defined by the law is anyone under the age of twelve, and children’s jewelry is defined as any jewelry:

• Represented in its packaging, display, or advertising, as appropriate for use by children
• Sold with, attached to, or packaged together with other products that are packaged, displayed, or advertised as appropriate for use by children
• Sized for children and not intended for use by adults
• Sold in any of the following:
  • A vending machine
  • Retail store, catalogue, or online web site where products offered are packaged, displayed, or advertised as appropriate for use by children
  • A discrete portion of a retail store, catalogue, or online website, where products offered are packaged, displayed, or advertised as appropriate for use by children

Effective January 1, 2021, the law requires that children’s jewelry sold or offered for sale in the state of New York, not contain total lead content greater than 40 ppm but less than 600ppm. If lead content exceeds the allowed limit, the item shall bear a warning stating that at least one component of the product contains lead.

The warning shall be on the product or on a label on the immediate container and shall at minimum state: "WARNING: CONTAINS LEAD. MAY BE HARMFUL IF EATEN OR CHEWED. COMPLIES WITH FEDERAL STANDARDS."

Exemptions to the warning requirement apply, if:

• Federal law governs warnings in a way as to preempt state authority
• The component part containing lead is inaccessible during normal and foreseeable use and abuse testing
• The component parts are exempt from third-party testing as determined by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)
• The item is being resold or offered for resale

The New York Jewelry Law can be viewed at: http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/lawssrch.cgi?NVLWO:

For questions, please contact Laxmi Ravikumar (laxmi.ravikumar@intertek.com, +1-630-209-9265) or Pratik Ichhaporia (pratik.ichhaporia@intertek.com, +1-847-212-8273).