Green Options

Mattel. The name is no longer only synonymous with Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Polly Pocket. Now when you hear “Mattel”, it’s flashback time: to lead-laden, choketastic toys.

When the Consumer Products Safety Commission was charged with implementing the new CPSIA, designed to make toys safer, fans of handcrafted goods worried: would we still be able to get our beloved natural toys? After all, toy testing for lead and phthalates has a price tag attached that is harder on the small business owner than it is on corporate giants like Mattel.

Turns out, it’s especially easy for Mattel, as the toy manufacturer gets to use “independent” in-house testing instead of submitting its toys to third-party testing like everyone else, as the AP reports,

The Consumer Product Safety Commission recently, and quietly, granted Mattel’s request to use its own labs for testing.

Although I’d love to not be too cynical on this, guess what? Coincidentally, Mattel spent $1 million last year in lobbying costs.

Despite US restrictions on lead levels in paint, including a tougher law that debuted this month, lead poisoning due to consumer paint is still an issue. Why? Much of our paint comes from other countries.

 Between September 2006 and August 2007, Mattel imported almost 900,000 toys that violated rules on lead levels. Their subsidary Fisher-Price imported as many as 1.1 million.

Now the corporation is paying the price. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commision, the $2.3 million fine is the highest levied against a toy company. Thomas Moore, the acting commision chair, said,

This penalty should serve notice to toymakers that CPSC is committed to the safety of children, to reducing their exposure to lead and to the implementation of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.

As we all full well remember, the lead recalls caused panic among parents. Mattel’s negligence in manufacturing had the collective consumer culture in the States pointing a big fat finger at China as the cause of problems.

But it’s not only China.

It is common knowledge that lead is bad for our health, and our government is trying to protect our children from lead poisoning through the Consumer Product Safety Information Act, however misguided this legislation is.

New research from the University of Cincinnati concludes that kids exposed to lead are more likely to become violent criminals as adults.

Scientists studied 250 children that were exposed to lead in utero and found the adults who had the highest levels of lead in their blood as children had the highest arrest rates as adults.  “These findings provide strong evidence that early lead exposure is a risk factor for criminal behavior, including violent crime.”