Lead-Tainted Shoes Seized at Tacoma

US Customs and Border Protection has seized hundreds of pairs of children's shoes brought in through the Port of Tacoma that were tainted with three times the allowable amount of lead, the federal agency revealed June 6.

After the shipment was targeted by Customs officials at Tacoma for examination, samples were taken and tested by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Laboratory analysis found the shoes contained 300 parts per million of lead; the acceptable level is 100 ppm.

The shipment, according to Customs, originated in China, and had been designated for a Seattle-area distributor. If not intercepted, the shoes, which are valued at more than $23,000, according to Customs, would likely have wound up on store shelves.

“One of CBP’s missions is keeping a wide variety of harmful products from reaching the American marketplace,” US CBP Area Port Director Mark Wilkerson said. “Lead-contaminated children’s footwear is one such product.”

In fiscal year 2011, over 9,100 shipments of lead-contaminated products with an estimated domestic value of more than $24 million were seized by CBP in coordination with CPSC at ports of entry across the country, according to Customs.

The shipment of contaminated footwear will eventually be destroyed, CBP says. The agency did not identify the shipper or the distributor the shoes had been designated for.

Half-Million Dollars’ Worth of Cocaine Found in Shipping Container

About 64 pounds of cocaine, which law enforcement officials estimate has a street value of more than $585,000, was found in a cargo container at a terminal within the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex last week.

US Customs and Border Protection officials announced March 2 that the drug had been found the day before concealed in the panels of an empty refrigeration container. The container originated in El Salvador with vessel stops in Guatemala and Mexico, and had been returned to the terminal after delivering a shipment of cantaloupes to a distributor in California, according to Customs.

The discovery came after customs officers targeted the container during routine operations. Drug sniffing dogs were then brought to the location, and they alerted handlers to one of the containers front panels.

Once the panel was removed, officers found 20 bricks of a white, powdery substance wrapped in plastic. The substance later tested positive for cocaine.

US Customs says it seized nearly five million pounds of narcotics in fiscal year 2011, 20 percent more than the previous fiscal year.