Early Childhood Resources, LLC is announcing a voluntary recall for 860 yellow Sure Grip paintbrushes (product #ELR-0152) sold to school supply companies between May 2007 and January 2008 for about $2.00/pack. This brush is sold in a four pack containing red, blue, yellow, and green and was manufactured in China. Only the yellow brush contains excess levels of lead. All other colors meet the federal requirements.
The surface coating on the handle of the yellow brush contains levels of lead that violate the federal lead paint standard. ECR has contacted all customers that purchased this product and asked them to stop selling any remaining brushes from their inventory as well as stopped any shipments containing the yellow brush.
ECR will provide replacement brushes to each retailer, and include a postage paid, addressed envelope with each replacement for the end customer to return the recalled brush. A hotline will also be in effect if any customer would prefer to obtain their replacement brush directly from ECR.
There have been no injuries reported with the use of this product. ECR discovered this issue through improvements to our quality assurance procedures.
These procedures are:
- The requirement of a Bill of materials and paint supplier lead reports
- Independent verification of lead paint results by a third party lab performed on production paint
- Random testing performed on samples pulled from the production line by our field QA staff and sent for testing
- Comprehensive Inventory Evaluation: ECR hired an independent lab to verify the lead test results on all items in our catalog. This was done using an XRF hand held lead detector, capable of determining lead levels as low as 1 ppm.
It was this step that allowed us to catch the excessive lead levels of the recalled product. This step has been added as an annual addition to our QA procedures.