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Andrew Gillespie Email
VP, Design and Development . Zak Designs
Spokane, WA
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Zak Designs recently received notification that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has sent a letter to retailers and manufacturers of soft-sided lunch kits. The FDA letter expressed concerns that there could be a possibility that some vinyl lunch kits might leach trace amounts of lead into food and suggested that these kits be removed from retail shelves. While we understand that this possibility might exist in lunch kits with significant levels of lead in the lining, we stand behind the testing results that prove that Zak Designs lunch kits exceed all established regulations and standards. We applaud the steps that the FDA is taking to protect consumers from possible harm from unsafe lunch kits, but we are disappointed in their suggestion to remove Zak lunch kits from their shelves after we have proven that Zak Designs' lunch kits are safe. Zak Designs has always maintained the strongest commitment to the children who are using our products. As such, we routinely test all of the products we make to ensure that they are unquestionably safe. When we were made aware that some manufacturers were selling lunch kits that contained levels of lead in the lining that exceeded the level deemed safe by the federal government, Zak Designs took the issue very seriously. We immediately posted information on our website that reiterated that we were not one of the companies that were named in the notification. We also had an assortment of our lunch kits tested by independent labs to provide an additional level of comfort to our customers and the consumers who had purchased our lunch kits. These tests revealed that not only was the level of lead in Zak Designs well below the level deemed safe by the federal government, the level of lead in Zak Designs' lunch kits was 98% lower than the level allowed under federal law. On our website, we provided the results of these tests which demonstrated that our lunch kits had insignificant (less than 8 parts per million) levels of lead, whereas some of the complained against lunch kits has as much as 56,400 parts per million. The actual results of those tests are outlined below: 1) A test measuring the soluble lead content showed that the lining of Zak Designs lunch kits contained less than 1 part per million of lead, which is significantly below the 90 ppm that is the legal soluble limit. 2) A test measuring the surface lead content showed that the lining of Zak Designs lunch kits contained less than 7.5 ppm per million, which is significantly lower than the 600 ppm lead content limit referenced in the report from CEH and outlined in 16 C.F.R. 1303.2. Zak Designs continues to stand behind the safety of our lunch kits and agrees with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's continued stance this issue that the amount of lead they discovered when they tested an assortment of vinyl lunch kits "would not present a health hazard to children." In a statement posted on their website, the CPSC states: "Based on the extremely low levels of lead found in our tests, in most cases, children would have to rub their lunch box and then lick their hands more than 600 times every day, for about 15-30 days, in order for the lunch box to present a health hazard." Because the testing performed on Zak Designs' lunch kits has proven that our kits have levels of lead far below most lunch kits, the CPSC's above statement would be extremely conservative in relation to our product. We want to assure all of our business partners and consumers that the safety of Zak Designs' lunch kits has not changed and we will continue to provide all of our customers with quality products that are unquestionably safe.Zak Designs Address
1604 S Garfield RoadSpokane, WA
United States