It’s unbelievable: Target and Walmart, two of the nation’s top retailers, are still profiting from products that expose your children to lead. 

• Summer 2007: Major retailers, including Target and Walmart, recall millions of lead-tainted toys from the hands of children. The toy recalls are reported widely in the national news.
• Fall 2008: Congress establishes the first-ever federal limit on lead in children’s products.
• October 2009: The Center for Environmental Health finds lead-contaminated toys and other products for kids still on the shelves at Target and Walmart.

It’s true: Our recent tests found lead-contaminated Walmart and Target store brand shoes, belts, and raingear for kids. One Target product contained more than 14 times the legal limit for lead! Fourteen times!!

Walmart and Target are required to have independent testing that shows these products don’t contain illegal amounts of lead. Where are the test results? Who knows? These reckless retailers don’t make their results available to the public.

After being exposed for selling health hazards to your children, after causing a problem that required national legislation, and after assuring federal regulators it was taking the problem seriously and could be trusted to protect kids, Target and Walmart are still selling lead-tainted products that threaten your children.

Promises haven’t worked. Recalls haven’t worked. A new federal law hasn’t worked. Enough is enough!

It’s time for the stores to hear from you. These are huge and powerful companies, who have the resources to make and sell safe products for your children. It’s time they also found the will to do it. 

Please join thousands of children’s health advocates and send a message to Target and Walmart this holiday season. Tell the stores you will shop elsewhere until they can assure you that they are taking further steps to keep leady products off of their shelves, and that they will make public their test results on all store-brand products.