Dec. 23, 2008 -- December is a festive month, but the holiday season is also full of hazards. Falling on the ice, frostbite, overeating, and now this: According to a new study, many types of Christmas lights contain dangerously high levels of lead.
Lead is a toxic metal that can disrupt brain development, especially in kids, causing learning disabilities, aggressive behavior, loss of IQ points, and more. The new study didn't directly link Christmas lights to these problems, but researchers found enough lead on the cords of lights to cause concern.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency sets maximum allowable levels of lead in household dust. "We found that levels in Christmas lights exceeded those levels -- significantly," said Joseph Laquatra, an environmental analyst at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
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Laquatra was shopping for Christmas lights when he noticed a warning on one package. It said the product contained lead, which is known by the state of California to cause birth defects.
California Proposition 65, The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, requires the state's governor to publish, at least once a year, a list of chemicals that cause cancer or reproductive harm. Manufacturers must also include warnings on products that contain those chemicals.
Other states don't require the same disclosure, but the label made Laquatra wonder if all Christmas lights contain lead, even when the packaging doesn't mention it. Lead is used as a stabilizer in the PVC coating on many types of electrical cords. It helps protect copper electrical conductors from light, heat and moisture.
Laquatra and colleagues collected 10 sets of Christmas lights -- some new, some more than 30 years old. Using gauze and distilled water, the scientists wiped a 3-foot section of cord on each set. They sent the samples to an independent lab for analysis.
The results, which appear in the December issue of the Journal of Environmental Health, showed detectible levels of lead in every sample.
"The amounts are not huge," said Phillip Landrigan, a pediatrician at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "But on the other hand, no amount of lead is safe for a child."
The scientists didn't test people's hands or blood after they handled Christmas lights. But they suspect that the cords shed lead dust, especially when exposed to sunlight.
For their part, Phillips Lighting company said it has been voluntarily working in the last year to reduce lead content in its products. Lead levels in the company's Christmas light strings are now below 300 parts per million, said Susan Bloom, Director of Corporate Communications at Philips Lighting and Philips Lighting Electronics in Somerset, N.J. That puts them below California's threshold levels for lead and makes them immune to Proposition 65 warnings.
Still, since small children put their hands and everything else in their mouths, Landrigan recommends keeping kids away from Christmas lights, washing all hands that come into contact with the glowing strings, and seeking out lead-free alternatives.
"Manufacturers might conjure up arguments that lead in their products is not accessible to children," Landrigan said. "My answer is: Hogwash. Lead gets out from wherever it is, and kids get into things wherever they are. The safest way to prevent children from being exposed is simply not to put the lead in, in the first place."
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