Walmart & Claires Pulling Children's Jewerly Feared Tainted

Federal and state watchdogs opened a new front in the campaign to keep poisons out of Chinese imports, launching inquiries into high levels of cadmium in children's jewelry while Walmart pulled many suspect items from its store shelves.

The jewelry and accessories store Claire's, with nearly 3,000 locations in North America and Europe, joined Walmart Stores Inc. in saying it would stop selling any item cited in an Associated Press investigation of the presence of cadmium in cheap bracelets and charms.

A day after The Associated Press documented the contamination in an investigative report, the top U.S. consumer safety regulator warned Asian manufacturers not to substitute other toxins for lead in children's charm bracelets and pendants.

Regulators and lawmakers reacted swiftly to the AP report, which found that some Chinese manufacturers have been using cadmium, sometimes at extraordinarily high levels. Congress clamped down on lead in those products in 2008, but cadmium is even more harmful.

Cadmium is attractive to Chinese manufacturers because it is cheap and easy to work with. But, like lead, it can hinder brain development in the very young, recent research shows.