The Consumer Product Safety Commission accessible lead procedure is designed to measure maximum potential lead exposure through ingestion. The CPSC uses a criterion of 175 µg accessible lead a long with a total lead content exceeding 0.06% as the basis for recalls of children's metal jewelry items (US CPSC, 2005b). Accessible lead levels were in every case well below 175 µg per bead, with a maximum of 49 µg per bead for item P40 (Table 1). However, when the number of beads on the jewelry items was taken into account, six of the nine items exceeded the 175 µg threshold. In every case, the majority of the accessible lead was extracted during the first hour. It should be noted that the accessible lead measurements were based on
extractions of single beads and thus do not account for potential bead to bead variation in
accessible lead content.