Hazardous materials: children's jewelry: heavy metals.

(1) Existing law prohibits the manufacturing, shipping, selling, or offering for sale of jewelry, as defined, for retail sale in the state, unless the jewelry is made entirely from specified materials. Existing law also prohibits any person from taking those actions with regard to children's jewelry, as defined, unless the children's jewelry is made entirely from certain specified materials. Existing law prohibits parties that are signatories to a specified consent judgment from being subject to enforcement under those provisions. This bill would additionally prohibit a person from manufacturing, shipping, selling, offering for sale, or offering for promotional purposes children's jewelry that contains any component or is made of any material that is more than 0.03% cadmium by weight. This bill would exempt from this prohibition any toy regulated for cadmium exposure under the federal Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 and would make conforming changes. The bill would provide that the exemption from enforcement action for signatories to that consent judgment does not apply to this prohibition. (2) Existing law requires the Department of Toxic Substances Control to adopt regulations to establish a process by which chemicals or chemical ingredients in products may be identified and prioritized for consideration as being chemicals of concern and to adopt regulations to establish a process by which chemicals of concern may be evaluated. The department is prohibited from duplicating or adopting conflicting regulations for regulated product categories. This bill would prohibit cadmium-containing jewelry from being considered as a product category already regulated or subject to pending regulation for purposes of those regulations. (3) Existing law imposes criminal penalties upon a manufacturer or supplier of jewelry who knowingly and intentionally manufactures, ships, sells, offers for sale, or offers for promotional purposes jewelry containing lead in violation of those provisions or who knowingly and with intent to deceive falsifies any document or certificate required to be kept or produced pursuant to those provisions. This bill would additionally impose those criminal penalties upon a manufacturer or supplier of jewelry containing cadmium, thereby imposing a state-mandated local program by creating new crimes. (4) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.