News of tainted jewelry and recalls takes time getting to local stores

As of Tuesday afternoon the toxic jewelry scare hadn’t trickled down to those behind the counters at local outlets of national chains, which have made headlines for selling children’s fashion trinkets loaded with cadmium, a naturally occurring heavy metal found to cause cancer.

The tainted merchandise, made in China, purchased by Associated Press investigators and tested by a professor at Ashland University in Ohio, came from stores in Ohio, New York, Texas and California, although the AP says similar pendants, brooches and bracelets had been distributed across the United States.

A young woman on duty at the Claire’s location in Sunrise Mall had heard nothing of toxic jewelry from China. Neither was she aware of Tuesday’s corporate office recall announcement for the item — a Best Friends charm bracelet. Likewise, a manager at the Alton Gloor Walmart said he’d received no recall instructions from Wal-Mart Stores Inc., then referred further questions to the corporate office.

Not everyone was in the dark. An employee at the Boca Chica Walmart said she had been informed of a recall involving "The Princess and the Frog" movie-themed merchandise, but said the promotion had been over for a month and those items were no longer on the shelves. Indeed, a perusal of the store’s toy and kids’ jewelry aisles revealed no such merchandise, or any of the other items specifically named in the AP investigation. Testing of a "Princess and the Frog" pendant showed it to contain cadmium, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks as the seventh most hazardous substance in the environment in its list of 275 priority substances.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced it was pulling all the items found to be tainted from its stores nationwide. Claire’s did the same, announcing Tuesday from its Pembroke Pines, Fla., headquarters that it would no longer sell the type of bracelet cited in the AP investigation. The company said in a statement that it only ships merchandise to its stores that has passed testing standards set down by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

"While we have no reason to believe that this product is unsafe, out of an abundance of caution we are taking this action because we take our responsibility to our customers very seriously," said the statement.