Healthy Toys Guide - With all the toy recalls these days, parents can now use a guide to healthy toys which includes a searchable database of toxic toys that lists dangerous levels of toxins in hundreds of childrens toys.
The Consumer Action Guide to Toxic Chemicals in Toys at healthytoys.org says only 20 percent of the 1,268 toys and other products tested had no trace of lead or harmful chemicals.
The Healthy Toys Guide tests show that an amazing 35% of children’s toys contain lead, many at amounts well above the federal recall standard used for lead paint.
HealthyToys.org shows how the most commonly purchased children’s products rank in terms of containing lead, cadmium, arsenic and other harmful chemicals.
The Michigan-based Ecology Center and its testing partners performed what they describe as a “screening” of chemicals using a handheld X-ray fluorescence device that detects surface chemical elements.
“This is not about alarming parents,” said Tracey Easthope, director of the Ecology Center’s Environmental Health Project. “We’re just trying to give people information because they haven’t had very much except these recall lists.”
“We’re not saying that … all of it will come out into a child,” she said. “We’re saying it’s a concern that so much of these products have these chemicals of concern in them.
“We shouldn’t have lead in kids’ products. We can make products without lead in them.”
Government Response to Healthy Toys Guide
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson said he also hasn’t seen the Ecology Center’s tests but said the federal agency would seek to verify its findings and initiate recalls if warranted.
He said the commission has been meeting with ASTM International, which spearheads voluntary safety standards for toys, to discuss crafting standards specific to lead in plastics. He said there also is movement on Capitol Hill to revise laws on lead in children’s products.
Wolfson said the commission launched 40 toy recalls in fiscal year 2006, three involving lead-paint violations. In 2007, there were 61 recalls, 19 involving lead-paint violations.
“What we would like to consumers to know is more recalls are on the way,” he said.
And that’s the latest news on the new Healthy Toys Guide.
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