A judge has ordered a Los Angeles-based company to pay more than $10 million for selling lead-tainted lunch boxes. The company, T-A Creations, sold 100,000 children’s lunch boxes to the California Department of Health for a giveaway promotion after the company had been warned about the health risks posed by its products in 2006. The state announced a recall of 56,000 of the giveaway lunch boxes last September. It also warned parents about another 300,000 lunch boxes that were distributed by the state in the past several years. This recent judgment stemmed from a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court by the Center for Environmental Health. Pursuant to terms of the court’s order, $7.5 million will go to the state, and $2.5 million will go to the nonprofit center. Michael Green, executive director of the Center for Environmental Health, an Oakland-based nonprofit group, observed:

We are shocked that a company would knowingly sell lead-tainted lunchboxes intended for California’s children. The judgment sends a strong signal that companies that put our children’s health at risk will pay the price.

The center notified T-A Creations in April 2006 that it had found unsafe lead concentrations in one of its lunchboxes sold to a summer camp. When the company did nothing to correct the problem, the center sued T-A Creations in July 2006. The order by Superior Court Judge Richard A. Kramer also permanently bars T-A Creations, which sells a variety of bags and cases, from “offering soft food and beverage containers, including lunchboxes, lunchbags and coolers, for sale in California without providing clear and reasonable warnings of carcinogenic and reproductive harm caused by lead and lead compounds.”

Source: Insurance Journal

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