5 January 2025, Quezon City. With the onset of 2025, the toxics watchdog group EcoWaste Coalition wasted no time in warning the public against potential lead exposure hazards in some stainless steel water tumblers being marketed for children’s use.
Last December 2024, the group procured four brightly painted tumblers from retail stores located in Mandaue and Manila Cities of which three are decorated with cartoon characters.
These stainless steel reusable water containers are decorated with paints containing lead way above the 90 parts per million (ppm) limit.
As per X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) screening conducted by the group, the tumbler with a teddy bear character was found to contain 32,820 ppm lead (yellow paint), while the ones with Felix the Cat and Pompompurin characters had 12,320 ppm (green paint) and 4,060 ppm (yellow paint). The tumbler with the phrase “future life” contained 27,560 ppm (yellow paint).
The XRF screening results indicate that the paints used to decorate the said tumblers are lead paints, or paints containing lead additives above 90 parts per million (ppm) limit, in violation of the country’s lead paint ban, the group said.
DENR Administrative Order 2013-24, or the Chemical Control Order for Lead and Lead Compounds, phased out the use of lead in paint manufacturing with specific deadlines, i.e., December 31, 2016 for lead-containing decorative paints and December 31, 2019 for lead-containing industrial paints.
The said regulation, which won the coveted Future Policy Award (special category on lead in paint) in 2021, also prohibited the use of lead in certain products such as school supplies. Tumblers, an essential need for children (as well as adults), are among the common school supplies that parents buy for their kids, especially during the opening of school classes.
In previous test buys, the EcoWaste Coalition also detected dangerously high levels of lead in some brightly colored tumblers bought from offline and online retailers. The paints in some tumblers were even found to contain a whopping 100,000 ppm lead! None of the analyzed products provided lead content information and warning.
While it strongly advocates for reuse and refill to help address the triple planetary crisis of climate change, waste and pollution and nature loss, the EcoWaste Coalition insisted that reusable and refillable products must conform with product safety standards, including compliance with the lead paint regulation.
Tumblers coated with lead-containing paints may pose lead exposure risks as the paints deteriorate and chip with frequent use.
The detection of lead on the surface coatings of some tumblers is a reason to worry, the EcoWaste Coalition said, as the leaded paint will deteriorate and chip with frequent use. The lead on the paint may end up being ingested by the user, especially by a child who is unaware of the health risk. Lead is toxic if ingested and can cause adverse health problems.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), which has classified lead among the ten chemicals of major public health concern, “lead exposure can have serious consequences for the health of children. At high levels of exposure to lead the brain and central nervous system can be severely damaged causing coma, convulsions and even death. Children who survive severe lead poisoning may be left with permanent intellectual disability and behavioral disorders.”
“At lower levels of exposure that cause no obvious symptoms, lead is now known to produce a spectrum of injury across multiple body systems. In particular, lead can affect children’s brain development, resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as reduced attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible,” the WHO said.
To ensure that only lead-safe reusable water bottles are made available to consumers, the EcoWaste Coalition renewed its call for the national government to specify the regulatory body responsible for implementing the ban on lead in consumer products such as tumblers, including the removal of non-compliant products from the marketplace.
Manufacturers must ensure that paints used in water tumblers must not contain lead in excess of the 90 ppm limit.
As most of the tumblers sold locally are sourced from abroad, the group asked importers to only bring in products with bona fide certificates of conformity to the 90 ppm total lead limit for paints, and for retailers, including online sellers, to demand for such certificates from suppliers before putting any painted tumblers on sale.
The EcoWaste Coalition likewise repeated its call for a full ban on hazardous chemicals in all children’s products, including school supplies. Children’s products, the groups emphasized, must be duly tested and labeled before being offered for sale, noting mandatory disclosure of chemicals in product (CiP) information will help consumers in making sound purchasing decisions for the well-being of their children.
https://chemical.emb.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/DAO-2013-24-CCO-Lead.pdf
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poisoning-and-health
