Your costume jewelry may hide scary levels of chemicals

Put down the $3 necklaces, ladies. It turns out that cheap costume jewelry from brands like Forever 21, H&M and Target could be making you ill. The Ecology Center tested 99 samples of costume jewelry from discount retailers and found that "more than half of the items contained high levels of hazardous chemicals," including lead, cadmium, nickel, mercury, and arsenic. Over a quarter of the items had levels of lead above the limit allowed in children's products, which has to be disturbing news for anybody whose baby grabs their bracelets, then puts that same hand into a bowl of Cheerios.