Aeropostale Bans Cadmium-Tainted Products from its Stores!
Cadmium – if you slept through high school chemistry, you may have never heard of it.
But cadmium is all over the news suddenly, with AP reporting that two national retailers are pulling jewelry items contaminated with the carcinogenic crap. If you’re just tuning in, this all came about because CEH discovered the items in the stores and filed litigation in California to force the companies to address the health threat last week.
Both Saks outlet store, Off 5th, and Aeropostale have announced that they are removing the contaminated items from stores and offering refunds to customers who purchased the items. Unfortunately, they failed to clarify the pronunciation of their store’s cool, Euro-sounding name. But they did pledge not to sell any product containing cadmium, and to that end, they notified their vendors that “all jewelry must also be tested for cadmium, in addition to our existing protocols, at an independent lab.” The two companies are following the lead of Catherines, who pulled their cadmium-tainted products immediately.
That’s good news, but your intrepid health advocates at CEH aren’t taking any chances. As our own Charles “The Potty Mouth Blogger” Margulis says, “We don’t know what the rest of their inventory may or may not contain. Our goal is a settlement that will cover all of their products.” With that in mind, we plan on continuing to pursue our litigation on this.
And the strategy is working. Saks Inc. spokeswoman Julia Bentley stated that all fifty-five Off 5th stores in the nation are removing the necklaces remaining on their shelves “because of the CEH threat of a lawsuit.”
To reach a settlement that truly protects consumers, we are working on a lawsuit under California’s Proposition 65, a law used to set strict limits on lead in both children’s and adult jewelry.
Click here for the full Associated Press article.