MONTPELIER, Vt. (Legal Newsline) - Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell has reached a $10,000 settlement with a Utah-based company over drinking glasses that contained excessive levels of lead.

Vandor LLC, which is based in Salt Lake City, allegedly imported the drinking glasses form China and Indonesia for sale in Vermont. Independent lab testing found that nine out of 15 Vandor glasses and mugs contained lead concentrations of between 14 and 81 times the state limit of 100 parts per million. The nine glasses were also found to contain the heavy metal cadmium, though at much lower levels than the lead.

"Lead is highly toxic, particularly to young children," Sorrell said. "There is no excuse for putting drinking glasses on the market that contain lead."

Lead was found at as much as 4,831 parts per million in a Vandor Gone with the Wind glass, 7,345 parts per million for a white Elvis Presley Glass and 8,164 parts per million for an Elvis Presley "Burning Love" glass.

Under terms of the settlement, Vandor is prohibited from selling any children's product in or into Vermont, including decorated glasses and mugs, unless a representative sample of the items from each manufacturing run is shown to have met certain low limits for lead and cadmium.

Vandor is also required by the settlement to report on its test results, terminate suppliers who produce more than a de minims number of non-compliant products, remove any high-lead or high-cadmium products from store shelves in Vermont and permit any consumer who has purchased a Vandor decorated glass to return the product to the retailer for a full refund.