Rainbow Light Prenatal Vitamin Settlement Reached in California

A $1.75 million Rainbow Light prenatal vitamin settlement provides funds for anyone who bought the affected vitamins over the last four years.

Rainbow Light Nutritional Systems LLC and Nutranext, both owned by The Clorox Company since March 2018, have agreed to the settlement with Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer. The City Attorney’s office had an independent third-party lab test Rainbow Light prenatal vitamins for lead because the supplements were advertised as “free of heavy metals” and made with ingredients “with the lowest detectable lead level” available.

The independent lab found the vitamins actually contain detectable levels of lead, above 0.2 micrograms per day. Upon learning the test results, Feuer’s office contacted Rainbow Light, which revised the allegedly misleading labeling on its products.

Rainbow Light Prenatal Vitamin Settlement

Rainbow Light is one of many supplement makers who have been driven to settle claims challenging the accuracy of their labels.

The Rainbow Light prenatal vitamin settlement includes an agreement that the company will test the vitamins every six months to ensure the vitamins contain less than 0.2 micrograms of lead per day. If the vitamins exceed that amount, the company will have to provide prompt notice to the City Attorney’s Office, begin an investigation, and report back to the City Attorney’s Office within 45 days to provide an update on the investigation. If the prenatal vitamins exceed the 0.2 micrograms per day for lead, Rainbow Light will produce and test a newly manufactured lot that does not exceed the 0.2 microgram per day limit within 120 days.

Rainbow Light also will also pay $250,000 in civil penalties and costs. A total of $1.5 million of the $1.75 million settlement will go directly to provide restitution to Californians who bought the affected prenatal vitamins in the past four years.

California’s Proposition 65 requires companies to issue warnings if products contain more than 0.5 micrograms per day, but new evidence indicates that level still might be dangerous to public health. California regulators have discussed lowering the standard for lead to 0.2 micrograms per day, a 60 percent reduction over the old standard established 40 years ago.

According to Rainbow Light’s website, the company was found in 1981 in Santa Cruz, Calif. A total of 10 different prenatal vitamins are available for purchase on the website, in addition to vitamins and supplements for various age groups and ailments.

Customers or the infants of customers who bought the Rainbow Light prenatal vitamins do not need to have suffered any side effects from lead in order to qualify for a portion of the settlement offer. A purchase of the Rainbow Light prenatal vitamins within the last four years will qualify you for this settlement.

California’s Proposition 65 began as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 and was enacted as a ballot initiative in November 1986. The Act requires the state to oversee and update a list of chemicals the state knows cause cancer or cause reproductive toxicity. The list contains an array of both naturally occurring and synthetic chemicals that may be used in manufacturing or may be byproducts of other chemical products, such as automotive vehicle exhaust.

Maintained by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the list was most recently updated on June 28, 2019.