Could your child's toys make them sick?

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) - Could your child's jewelry and other trinkets be making them sick?

Cadmium is now showing up in children's play things.

Ironically, lead has been all but banished from toys, but now it's being replaced by cadmium, an even more toxic material and there are no standards for it.

After Congress took action two years ago to get the lead out of children's toys, most of it made in other countries, researchers discovered another heavy metal in kids' play things, cadmium.

The "Princess and the Frog" pendant, playing off the popular Disney movie, became the first target of a cadmium recall when Wal Mart pulled it from store shelves last week.

"It is mind-boggling. Two things. One, that a company would have the gall to make it, and two, that we don't have any regulations that spell out that this is illegal," said Michael Green, of the Center for Environmental Health.

Cadmium in children's toys is not illegal because there is no law banning it, or even setting limits on it, with some children's jewelry containing as much as 90 percent.

When a Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer pendant turned up at a discount store in Rochester, Senator Charles Schumer promised changes.

Senator Schumer said, "The assault on the health and safety of our children continues, and it continues by manufacturers, in this case abroad, who seem to have no regard for the safety of children. Almost no ethics."

Scott Kramer of Eastern Applied Research said, "Everything that you are getting, unfortunately, are from other countries today, because we cannot afford to produce them in the United States. What that basically means is that there is no more testing being done on them, because it is impossible to test them all."

Scott Kramer is CEO for Eastern Applied Research, which tested a bagful of small foreign made Toys for Us.

While we didn't find any cadmium, the lead in a necklace went off the chart.

"We are simply saying, there is lead on this component, or there is a metal on this component. We can't tell really what the danger levels are, with just this test," said Shannon Carder, Quality Manager.

Are there home testing kits for cadmium?

They are all over the Internet, but none that we know of have been checked out by any product safety agencies, such as Consumer Reports.

Watch video to see a live test of cadmium in children's jewelry.