IN FEBRUARY last year a four-year-old boy from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was admitted to hospital with an ailment that baffled the doctors. He was agitated, desperately sick and severely dehydrated.

The next day as doctors methodically tested for the possible cause of Jarnell Brown’s illness, the child suffered a cardiac arrest. Two days later he was dead.

It was the autopsy that finally revealed the cause of death - a small heart-shaped pendant that was packed full of lead and which Brown had swallowed. The plated charm, made in China, had come free with a pair of Reebok shoes and was inscribed with Reebok’s name.

In Britain and Ireland, Brown’s death led to a recall of 145,000 similar charms that had been distributed free with Reebok’s classic footwear. Trading standards officers pledged there would be a “thorough” investigation to ensure no other trinkets were available with such high levels of lead.

The promised inquiry never materialised. As a Sunday Times investigation has found, out of 24 items of jewellery bought and tested over the past month, eight had excessive levels of lead, with six of the items showing a lead level of 80% or above. This compares with a recommended safety limit in America and Canada of 0.06%.

Hamleys and Monsoon Accessorize sold two items each that tested positive for lead. Another four pieces of children’s jewellery that tested positive for lead were bought from stalls.

Although once widely used in household paint and as an additive in petrol, lead is a highly toxic metal that is particularly dangerous for children. A child who swallows large amounts may develop anaemia, muscle weakness and brain damage. Lower levels of consumption are linked to behavioural problems and lower IQ scores.

Regulations on toy safety have strict limits on lead levels and even watches sold in the UK can contain only 0.1% lead, but in an apparent loophole, children’s fashion jewellery is exempt from any specified limits. Christine Heemskerk, officer for product safety at the Trading Standards Institute, said she was not aware of any trading standards officers checking children’s trinkets for lead.

In contrast to this apparently lax approach in Britain, politicians and the regulatory authorities in America have gone into overdrive over the safety of jewellery and other products promoted to children.

Even before Brown’s death, there was growing concern about a range of Chinese products - from counterfeit tooth-paste to contaminated pet food. After February 2006, children’s toys and jewellery were also put under the spotlight.

It was claimed - perhaps with some justification - that much of the backlash against Chinese goods was motivated by US protectionism, but there were also genuine safety problems. The toy company Mega Brands Inc recalled 3.8m of its Magnetix building sets in March last year because of cases where children had suffered internal injuries after swallowing magnets. Eight months later Mattel announced a similar recall of 2.4m toys.

More than 9m items of jewellery were also recalled, the bulk of them imported from China. The problem has even become an issue in the presidential campaign. Barack Obama, bidding to run in 2008, introduced legislation to strengthen measures against lead in children’s toys and jewellery.

Last week the issue of toxic toys was once again in the headlines - and once again the problem was Chinese-made products. Mattel announced that it was expanding its November 2006 recall and pulling nearly 18.2m Chinese-made toys from the world market, including nearly 2m from Britain.

The American-led recalls have exposed Britain’s meagre testing regime for consumer products. Windsor and Maidenhead council, which has Mattel’s UK headquarters on its doorstep, said last week it had not conducted any random safety checks on toys in the past year.

With nearly £20 billion of imports from China in 2006, there are growing numbers of complaints about faulty or dangerous toys and other consumer products. In the last year the European Union has issued nearly 600 alerts about faults in Chinese imports, including a hammer drill sold in B&Q that broke the fingers of some users when it fell apart in use and a Marks & Spencer kettle with a handle that fell off.

The problems with lead in children’s jewellery are proliferating because in China lead is a cheap and widely available metal. Jef-frey Weidenhamer, professor of chemistry at Ashland University, Ohio, has done tests that suggest some of the metals may have been recycled by Chinese manufacturers from old computers.

He warned that the health impact could last years and may never be traced back to its source. “Some of the effects - such as measurable differences in IQ or learning difficulties - are often removed in time from the exposure and are unlikely to be linked to a necklace or a bracelet worn some years earlier,” he said.

John Milligan, of the Jewellery Distributors’ Association, said the industry wanted to phase out the use of lead in children’s jewellery and was developing affordable tests, but proper plating helped minimise any risk.

Rosalynde Harrison, company secretary of Monsoon Accesso-rize, said regular safety checks were conducted on children’s jewellery. She said: “We have had no complaints from our customers regarding incidents pertaining to lead content.”

Additional reporting: Charlotte Beauchamp

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