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Cheap jewellery made in China using toxic waste such as car batteries could be on sale in New Zealand.
Consumer Affairs Ministry product safety adviser Alan Collins said ministry staff had visited retailers looking out for items of the same brand which have been recalled in the United States and Australia, but none had been identified so far.
There had not been any complaints from the public, Mr Collins added.
He said anyone who feared their jewellery might contain lead should simply bin it.
Signs of a high lead content include a greyish colour - and a grey mark when rubbed on white paper, as well as a heavy weight in relation to the item's size.
A professor at Ashland University in Ohio, Jeffrey Weidenhamer, said the jewellery began as metal waste exported from the US to China, where it was collected and melted down by rubbish scavengers.
Jewellery and other metal products with up to 100 per cent lead content had subsequently turned up and been recalled in the United States and Australia.
It was likely the same items had arrived in New Zealand, he told The Dominion Post newspaper.
Children in particular were vulnerable to lead-containing items, and children under three could be harmed or killed by even small amounts of lead.
- NZPA
