Lead in Reusable Bags: What You Need to Know

Beyond asking suppliers to provide numbers directly, there are independent resources to verify product compliance, like the Quality Certification Alliance. "In the case of QCA-certified suppliers, QCA professional staff as well as an independent third party examiner—Bureau Veritas—has verified the quality of these processes through on-site audits at the supplier's headquarters and at factories in China," Brenner said. "There are many other fine suppliers in the industry with equally competent supply chain processes. The key point is for distributors to ensure that the supplier involved is doing everything necessary to spec and produce safe and compliant product and is knowledgeable about the state and federal regulations involved."

"The most important thing a distributor can do is to buy from suppliers they trust to have disciplined and thorough product safety and regulatory compliance processes in place," he added.

Both Brenner and Duffy emphasized the importance or product safety and federal compliance, while also noting that distributors should remain informed and not allow misinformation in the news to sway them. "Lead content in a reusable bag should not be an automatic assumption," Duffy said. "The vast majority of reusable bags fall well within the legal thresholds and are entirely compliant. Recent media scrutiny would have consumers believe this is a systemic trait to such bags, but that simply isn't true."