Do Holiday Lights Come in Unleaded?

A Reader Writes The Green Guide:

A friend recently alerted me to the Proposition 65 warning on Christmas tree lights regarding lead exposure from the wires. I searched your site, and came up with the Product Report on children's toys where this danger is mentioned in PVC coated wires. I've done a short web search on the subject and haven't learned much more.

I have several questions:

1) It's not clear why some PVC covered wires have lead content, and some do not (and hopefully, which are which). Do you have the answer to that question? My best guess would be that lax environmental regulations in China are causing dangerous products to be spread all over the world.

2) I would assume that the PVC covering wires is not the only PVC that has lead in it. And considering how ubiquitous PVC is in our lives, aren't we all being exposed to a lot more lead than we're aware of? I knew about phthalates already, but it certainly was a surprise to me to learn today that PVC is a source of lead contamination as well.

M.S.
Santa Cruz, CA

The Green Guide Responds:

This holiday season, the last thing anyone needs is exposure to brain-damaging lead, and you are right to be concerned about its use in other polyvinyl chloride (PVC) products. Lead can not only damage developing brains but can cause kidney damage and anemia; it is also a probable human carcinogen. In PVC, lead (or lead salts to be more specific) acts as a stabilizer, preventing damage from heat or ultraviolet radiation. Besides lead, cadmium (a known carcinogen) and organotins (chemical compounds containing tin and carbon) are also used as stabilizers. Ironically, according to IBM, lead is also used to prevent the degradation of another hazardous component of PVC, hormone-disrupting phthalate plasticizers.

Due to California's Proposition 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, wiring sold in California must bear a warning label if it contains lead. These warning labels may also be seen outside of California, but because other states do not require them, products without labels may still contain leaded PVC. American companies wishing to sell without labels and recognizing that many procurement policies in other states require PVC wiring without lead have removed the heavy metal from their wiring. Underwriters Laboratory now has special testing facilities to assure them that the wiring is lead-free. In other countries, such as China, though, regulation either is lax or non-existent.

These days, the European Union is providing the greatest push for removing lead with regulations that will limit the use of lead, cadmium and other toxic substances from electrical and electronic products by July 1, 2006. Companies that wish to sell in the EU are already gearing up for this change.

Unfortunately, we haven't yet found a set of completely lead-free Christmas lights. And artificial Christmas trees may also pose a needless lead risk as a study published in the December Journal of Environmental Health showed. Lead was detected on the leaves of two older trees out of the four new and four old trees tested.

As for your second point, it's questionable how many other PVC products contain lead. After Greenpeace released a 1997 report finding lead and cadmium in children's vinyl toys, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Health Canada released reports contradicting their findings, determining that (as Health Canada put it), "very few children's products made from vinyl (PVC) plastic contain significant amounts of releasable lead."

In 1996, the CPSC found that lead in vinyl mini-blind products was released as dust on the surface of the blinds. Responding to the CPSC's call for change, the vinyl miniblind industry removed lead from their products. And according to BuildingGreen.com, lead is also in insulation for electrical cables. When old electrical wiring is shredded to recycle metals, the lead can leach out of the leftover PVC, creating a potential exposure hazard for workers and a hazardous waste disposal problem.

As for how much lead we are being exposed to, unfortunately there are many other sources besides PVC. The Centers for Disease Control list deteriorated lead paint and resulting soil contamination as the major source of lead exposures for children. For adults occupational and recreational exposures are the main sources. Lead exposures also come from lead solder in canned foods and water from leaded pipes. And there are number of others sources, including smelters and mining operations, indoor firing ranges, old paint removal and pewter drinking vessels.

Resources

For more information about protecting your family from lead hazards, see EPA's Lead in Paint, Dust and Soil page.