AS YOUR story about the Department of Public Health's efforts to regulate lead content in kids' jewelry points out, there are two competing costs at the center of this debate.
On one hand is the cost to our children's brains and bodies as even small exposures to lead accumulate over time and cause irreversible damage.
On the other hand is the cost to retailers who say the agency's new rules (which are set to take effect next month) will put them at a competitive disadvantage.
After the DPH last year revealed that stores in Massachusetts were selling fashion jewelry for children with lead at levels 1,800 times what is considered safe, the agency was right to require stores to prove that its children's jewelry is safe.
Children not only wear their jewelry around their necks, wrists, and fingers, but they also put things in their mouths.
With lead-tainted jewelry, that can mean lifelong effects, and that should not be a cost the state is willing to pay.
LEO SARKISSIAN, Executive director
The Arc of Massachusetts, Waltham
