Look out for lead: our investigation shows progress, but you need to be careful.(SAFETY ALERTS)

STORE SHELVES are somewhat safer than they were a year ago, when lead laden products cast a pall over holiday shopping and prompted recalls of almost 14 million items as varied as toys and slipcovers. But consumers can't let down their guard yet.

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A CONSUMER REPORTS investigation found that some products that we identified in December 2007 as high in lead were largely gone from big retailers, but some were still available in a few stores and online. While tougher federal laws are about to take hold, suspect products are still showing up in unexpected places.

In total, more than 6 million products were recalled for lead in the first nine months of 2008. Consider the story behind just one of those recalls:

Judy Braiman, president of Empire State Consumer Project, a nonprofit advocacy group in Rothester, N.Y., gave a speech in November 2007 advising parents to buy books rather than toys to avoid the risk of lead exposure. Then she found a children's storybook that came with a metal necklace containing a ballet-shoes chann.

Braiman knew that inexpensive jewelry often contains lead, so she had the necklace tested at a certified lab. It turns out that the charm exceeded federal limits for lead on surface coatings. She notified the retailer, which filed its own report with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Three months later, the CPSC announced that the book's publisher was recalling 500,000 of the necklaces, which had been on the market since 2003.

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