Assessment of leaching potential of highly leaded jewelry

Lead is a potent neurotoxin particularly toxic to young children, and in response to recent poisonings of children and high levels of lead contamination in children's jewelry, US regulatory standards for lead content in these items have become much more stringent. Parents are often advised to throw out suspect items in the trash. While household wastes are generally exempt from consideration as hazardous waste, the potential for leaching of hazardous quantities of lead from such items is unknown. A modified Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP), in which intact jewelry components were subjected to leaching, was used to evaluate the potential for leaching of lead from highly leaded jewelry. Of 62 jewelry components tested, 61 exceeded the US regulatory standard for lead of 5mg/L, and leachate lead concentrations averaged 1460 mg/L. Twenty-six of the component items tested yielded TCLP lead concentrations exceeding 1000 mg/L. These results demonstrate that highly leaded jewelry items may leach significant amounts of lead, and provide another reason to remove lead from these products. Furthermore, these results suggest that while the volume of such items in the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream is small, they have the potential to contribute significant quantities of lead to MSW leachates.