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2007 will go down in history as the year when toy safety was no longer assumed by parents in the United States. Gone are the days when parents blindly selected any toy from the shelf of a big box store and thought their child was protected from lead and other heavy metals. This year has been plagued by recall after recall, and unfortunately, children have been injured by these unsafe toys. The following is a summary of recent news on toy safety to end our year.

On December 19, 2007, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill lowering the allowable lead levels in toys, as well as mandated independent toy testing. Funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission would also be increased through this bill. The senate will not take action until 2008 on the issue. According to the Daily Grist,

The current draft of the Senate bill would do many of the same things the House-passed version does, but would also allow state attorneys general to sue to enforce federal product-safety laws, protect employees who report safety law violations, increase the civil penalty cap to $100 million, and give industry less time to comply with the lower lead standards…Meanwhile, presidential candidate Barack Obama went even further yesterday by calling for a ban on the import of all toys from China.

I like to browse Ebay for unique, homemade wooden toys and Waldorf dolls. Like Etsy, artisans use Ebay to sell their handy work and reach a broader audience. Recently, recalled toys have been showing up on this online auction marketplace.

The plethora of recalled toys makes it difficult for consumers to know about every unsafe toy identified by the CPSC. During a recent search, KLTV 7 of Jacksonville, Texas found several recalled toys on Ebay. “It’s disturbing that if someone did not know that these items had been recalled that they were being resold,” said Stephanie Carlton, a concerned mother. “It’s a total lack of concern for someone else’s child.” It does make you wonder…what happens to recalled toys once they have been pulled from the shelves?

More bad news about lead: It is in 61% of name brand lipsticks! The $50 billion cosmetic industry largely regulates itself, and the FDA has not set a limit on  lead levels in lipstick. Thank goodness we have the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and the Environmental Working Group to keep us informed.According to Enviroblog:

One-third of the tested lipsticks exceeded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s limit for lead in

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Sometimes, I am proud to live in the Golden State. If the federal government won’t protect our children, as least California will try. Last month, Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law AB 1108 banning the use of phthalates in children’s products. This week, California Attorney General Jerry Brown sued 20 toy companies for selling toys with “unlawful quantities of lead” under Proposition 65.

Some of the companies being [...]

When I first learned about lead in children’s lunch boxes, I rushed to the hardware store to buy my own Home Lead Test Kit. I was concerned about my daughter’s commercial character backpack (which thankfully we no longer have), and we conducted our own Eco Child’s Play lead testing experiment. The results were negative, but now, I have learned that home lead test kits may not be accurate, thus neither was our experiment’s results reliable.

According to Grist, home lead test kits are not reliable for children’s toys: “The Consumer Product Safety Commission put 104 kits to the test and found that 56 failed to detect lead in toys, while two overachievers warned of the heavy metal where it didn’t exist.” How are consumers supposed to feel safe? My daughter just received a bracelet from the prize box at school, and paranoid eco-mom wants to test it for lead. Is it worth the money to buy a home lead test kit? In light of the evidence that home lead tests are not reliable, the CPSC suggests worried parents send toys off to labs to be tested. Isn’t that the CPSC’s job? Consumer Reports followed the CPSC’s conclusions with their own tests. They report,

Our conclusion, that they can be limited but useful screening tools to identify lead in household products, is different from the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s recent announcement that consumers should not use these products to find lead in their homes. Our differences lie not as much in the testing itself as in the interpretation of the data. Here’s how we came to our conclusions and why we believe parents should consider these kits as a helpful tool for screening household products.

What do mercury, cyanide, lead, ammonia, and benzo(a)pyrene have in common? These make up the 1.7 million pounds of pollutants that were dumped by U.S. Steel into Lake Michigan (via the Grand Calumet River) in 2005. A water discharge permit was recently proposed that may reduce or eliminate limits on heavy metals and toxic chemicals discharged by U.S. Steel into the Grand Calumet River, which flows into Lake Michigan.

The

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There have been a flurry of recalls yesterday and today, and although I planned to post on a different subject, I can’t ignore the wooden toys included in the recall. I have always been such an advocate for wooden toys, that it breaks my heart to see lead in their paint.

Wooden toy recalls:

• Additional Thomas and Friends (200,ooo) due to lead paint-All-Black Cargo Car, Toad vehicle with brake lever, Olive

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For another, more serious perspective, see today’s NY Times article “After Stumbling, Mattel Cracks Down in China” and the Green Guide’s “The Lowdown: The Latest on Lead Recalls“.

Only 3 days left to leave a comment and enter our monthly drawing for a hemp Eco Child’s Play bag.

Dangerous toy recalls have predominated the news lately. From magnets that can cause severe intestinal damage or death if swallowed to lead-based paints, mass marketed children’s toys made in China are not fit for our youngest population or the workers who make them. The most recent massive recalls have come from major toy companies, such as Mattel (maker of Barbie, Batman, Dora, etc.) and

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The recall of Thomas the Tank Engine toys, as well as other recent recalls, reminds us that our children will never be safe until children are safe globally from harmful products in their toys. A recent opinion article in the New York Times by Christian Warren speaks to this issue. “The Little Engine That Could Poison” reminds us that the important lessons to be learned from these recalls is [...]

After discovering my children had the most toxic car seats evaluated by the Ecology Center, I purchased two Evenflo Big Kid Deluxe Booster Car Seats. These booster seats were lower on the list of toxicity and available locally, so it was an immediate solution to our toxic car seat problem. After one 20 minute car ride with the Evenflo Big Kid Deluxe Booster Car Seats, I developed a headache and my lungs felt weird. [...]