Two years ago athletic shoe giant Reebok announced a recall of 300,000 lead tainted charm bracelets that were given away as free gifts with the purchase of children’s footwear.
In March 2006, a 4-year-old boy from Minneapolis who swallowed the bracelet’s heart-shaped pendant died from lead poisoning. Now Reebok has agreed to pay a $1 million penalty, the largest ever for a Federal Hazardous Substances Act (FHSA) violation. Reebok denies wrongdoing.
Lead-tainted jewelry such as this charm bracelet is not uncommon these days. There were over 17 million items recalled for lead contamination in 2007 alone.
Reebok to Pay Record $1,000,000 Civil Penalty for Violation of Federal Hazardous Substances Act [CPSC]
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Common people everyone knows Lead sucks, Mecury tastes way better!!
@drharris: partly right, the complete correct answer is to not buy anything from China, this includes food, after all China is trying to poison us, and our pets…..but we are so stupid we still send China our business.
@BStu: @44 in a Row: Local news up here said that Reebok had settled privately with the family.
This article [www.kare11.com] says that the charm was 99% lead. A comment above stated 67%. Either way, it was WAY too much to be in there.
I’m still trying to figure out how Reebok can agree to pay a $1 million dollar fine, and still deny any wrongdoing on their part…
@BStu: Really, sue Reebok? Granted the lead charm bracelets as a purchase incentive for children’s shoes was a bad idea, but, I really doubt Reebok in any way implied or stated that these charm bracelets were good teething rings or appropriate for 4 year olds to put in their mouths.
How about the parents? Should we sue them too, because they obviously weren’t supervising the little boy properly, or he wouldn’t have swallowed the thing in the first place? Or, at the very least they would have realized he swallowed it and notified doctors in the ER so he could be properly diagnosed. Since they’re the parents, I guess they really can’t be sued. Maybe law enforcement should bring criminal charges? Child neglect, sounds good, right?
And, finally, if Reebok is getting sued, they *have* to sue the hospital. How incompetent of the ER doctors to not realize this kid swallowed something toxic and if they didn’t remove it immediately it was going to kill him. Seems like a clear cut case of malpractice to me. Hospital should be made to pay up too.
Sadly this kid died because a lot of people who should have made the right decisions didn’t. But I can’t see any one party being more responsible for this child’s death than another.
@thedragonlady: Malpractice is usually a deviation from the standard of care that causes harm to a patient. Of course, we don’t have the child’s medical chart here, but it sounds like they didn’t deviate from the standard of care. The child was vomiting – without other more serious symptoms accompanying the vomiting, the standard of care would probably be to hydrate the patient (IV fluids since they couldn’t keep liquids down) and discharge with instructions to the parent to monitor symptoms and bring the kid back if they worsened. It isn’t the standard of care to order a CT scan every time someone has vomiting – if they ordered a $1,000 test every time someone threw up, our medical costs would be even more out of hand. I feel terrible for this family, but I don’t think the hospital is liable, based on the information we were given.
@chatterboxwriting: Unfortunately, I don’t do sarcasm as well when writing as I do when speaking. My muddled point was that I don’t think any one person/entity is entirely at fault here.
My opinion is this was just a ridiculously tragic domino effect that resulted in the accidental death of a child.
@cmdr.sass:
You should be banned, then die in a fire, after being coated with lead paint.
@thedragonlady: Dude, it’s pretty clear that one should not give lead objects to children, regardless of whether you advertise it as a teething ring or not, because reasonable people understand that kids are stupid and put things in their mouth that they shouldn’t. That’s why some toys are marked for Ages 8+ or whatever–smaller kids are at risk for choking on small pieces, for instance, even though the toymakers are selling them as Legos and not candy. Everyone understands that legos might get swallowed by kids, and everyone would be very and rightfully upset if suddenly legos were made out of lead. Saying, “What? We never told anyone to eat legos” doesn’t seem likely to succeed as a defense there.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that an item designed to be worn against the skin would not contain toxic metals.
In other news, if we all ignored morons like cmdr.sass, would they eventually get bored and stop trolling? I think we should give it a try, since they’re getting exactly what they want when everyone gets pissed off at them. Just an idea.
@thedragonlady – Understood.