The Times is reporting that some overzealous parents are manually testing their children’s toys for lead. Take Andrew Jones, a well meaning but admittedly paranoid father to a 3-year-old:
Like many parents, Mr. Jones said he was suspicious of all of his daughter’s toys now that millions of items for children have been recalled for high levels of lead.
Here at Consumerist we’ve been keeping an eye on the 2007 lead contamination recalls. Here’s September’s update:
Extremely high levels of lead were found in a Go Diego Go backpack, a Superfly monkey and a pair of Circo Lulu boots, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (a group dedicated to ridding the world of PVC) reported in a new study released yesterday. In all, 11 items they tested contained lead levels and/or heavy metals well over the safety standard, 10 of which contained PVC, or vinyl. The backpack had levels of 4,600 parts per million. The CPSC standard is 600 parts per million.
According to a recall notice just posted by the CPSC, RC2 is recalling additional “Thomas & Friends” toys that are contaminated with lead-based paint.
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More Thomas & Friends™ Wooden Railway Toys (lead), Happy Giddy Gardening Tools and Children’s Sunny Patch Chairs sold at Target (lead), Britain’s “Knights of the Sword” Series Toys (lead), Jo-Ann Stores Children’s Toy Rake (lead), Guidecraft Floor Puppet Theaters (lead), : Rhode Island Novelty Children’s Spinning Wheel-Metal Necklaces (lead), More TOBY N.Y.C. Children’s Metal Jewelry (lead), Quesos Sabrosos Mexicanos Queso Cincho de Guerrero (salmonella).
Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologises personally to you, the Chinese people and all of our customers who received the toys. It is important for everyone to understand that the vast majority of these products that we recalled were the result of a flaw in Mattel’s design, not through a manufacturing flaw in Chinese manufacturers.
The Friends of Mel Foundation recalled 200,000 beaded bracelets contaminated with lead on news that a 9-year-old fell ill after putting the lead-ridden bracelet in his mouth. Proceeds from the bracelets generated over $1 million that went towards cancer research. From the Boston Globe:
Independent lab tests conducted on various bracelets by Massachusetts Materials Research Inc. showed that the multicolored beads in the Friends of Mel’s bracelets contain no lead but that the small silver-toned rings connecting the beads have a high lead content. The beads are from China and Turkey and the small rings are from China, Herskovitz said.
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The state of California recalled 56,000 children’s lunchboxes over lead concerns. The lunchboxes had been distributed by the Health Department to promote healthy eating. [AP]
Parading before you today will be two familiar panels: The first will feature acting Consumer Product Safety Commission Chair Nancy Nord and Commissioner Thomas Moore, who skipped out of last week’s hearing for a dentists appointment. The second will be devoted solely to Mattel CEO Robert Eckert.
The New York Times took a look at some European toy makers who decided to let the Chinese Poison Train pass them by. Why didn’t they outsource their manufacturing to China?
China’s toy imports make up more than half the toy market in the EU, and apparently their lax safety record hasn’t escaped the grim, existential gaze of Europe. Meglena Kuneva, an EU commissioner, put it quite bluntly in front of the EU’s internal market and consumer protection committee last week: “This is the last warning. If there’s an unsatisfactory report in October we will [impose] the next layer of measures. Among them is a ban on products,” which the Associated Press reports could include toys.
Lead isn’t what you need to watch out for with American toys—it’s design flaws and the policies of irresponsible toy companies, says E. Marla Felcher on Slate. One study “recently found that of all the toys recalled since 1988, 76 percent involved design flaws. Kids choked, were strangled, and were burned by toy makers’ design mistakes.”
The reason so many toys were recalled this summer is not that there weren’t enough regulations. It’s that toy makers were ignoring the regulations that are already on the books. And the new testing proposal won’t stop them from continuing to do so.
Testifying before congress today, Mattel CEO Robert Eckert demonstrated the size of the aperture it’s easier for a camel to pass through than for a lead toy manufacturer to get into heaven. [NYT]
Today is a big day for Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). Starting at 11am, the Chairman of the powerful Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government will kick off a series of hearings examining the toy industry’s seemingly magnetic attraction to lead paint. Durbin, whose Subcommittee has jurisdiction over the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s budget, will grill toy industry representatives, consumer advocates, and members of the government over plans to protect America’s children from the dangers silently lurking on toy shelves by establishing an independent testing regime.
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A family in Hainan, China worried that it had a tainted bottle of water on its hands, so it gave the water to a pet chicken; the chicken died “within a minute.” We smell a new export opportunity here for Chinese manufacturers—your very own house chicken to peck out any tainted toys, toothpaste, or pet food. And maybe it can sniff the popcorn, too. Reuters already made a chicken-choking joke, so we’ll pass. [Reuters]
Today begins the Sino-US Consumer Product Safety Summit, “an effort to sooth the black eyes that China and the U.S. are sporting after months of revelations that China is sending tainted products to the U.S. and the federal government has been doing little about it,” writes Dennis Rockstroh on his San Jose Mercury News blog.
Disney is a name a lot of parents trust, so it came as a surprise to many that toys and jewelry featuring Disney characters would be recalled for lead contamination. The jewelry seen here, for example, was recalled for lead contamination after being sold at mall outlets like The Limited, Too.
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Ohio’s legislature passed the Product Liability Act in 2006, which capped certain court damages at $5,000 and created special protections for companies that once sold paint containing lead. Gov. Ted Strickland vetoed it, but the Ohio Supreme Court overturned the veteo last month on a technicality. Today, a group of consumer advocates in Ohio turned in 1,800 signatures in an attempt to bring the issue to a public vote in November ’08. [Business Week]
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