November 2nd was not just another workday for dealers at 21 casinos and card rooms throughout California. It was also the first day that the gaming chips they handle for hours on end contained virtually no lead.
A new agreement among the advocacy group, Center for Environmental Health (CEH), poker chip manufacturer Gaming Partners International Corporation (GPI), and gaming operators in the state means chips supplied by GPI now contain no more than 50 parts per million (ppm) of lead. A report prepared by Caroline Cox, research director for CEH, says that, previously, “GPI used formulas for the ingredients in chips that contained as much as 470,000 ppm lead.”