Silver dragées are the little, jawbreaker-like balls that usually adorn gingerbread houses or pastry confections in small, but beautiful numbers, particularly around the Christmas season. Their little sparkle is like a tiny star on top of a cookie tree. In vain I have searched the shelves for them this year, wanting to use them to adorn my snowflake-themed cake. Mark Pollock is the reason I could not find any silver balls for decorating this year.

Pollock, 56, is an attorney and former student activist in Northern California who sued approximately 100 of the biggest names and smallest vendors – from Martha Stewart Omnimedia to Gloria’s Cake and Candy Supplies – in pastry because he was “morally outraged” at their use of, sale of and implied endorsement of silver dragées. Though they are still legal to sell, companies no longer ship them to California stores and they have been pulled from shelves.

The sugary confections have a real silver coating. Silver is a metal that is bio-accumulative, so it stays in the body forever. Because it is possible to get silver poisoning, Pollock reasoned that the metals will simply build up to toxic levels and harm people. The dragées are sold in small bottles, usually in the cake-decorating aisle of the grocery store, and are labeled “Not for Human Consumption” or “For Decorating Purposes Only” because the FDA does not endorse eating them, though they are considered a food item in Europe.

If you have ever seen a silver dragée, you will know that they are very small. The amount of silver in their coating must also be small. Since the incidence of dragée-related poisoning is very low – I could not find a documented case, though they have been around for well over a century – it stands to reason that people are not eating a sufficient number of dragées over the course of their lifetimes to succumb to silver poisoning. Perhaps I would be concerned if I were downing bottles of silver balls every day. But I really just want to decorate my cookies.