Toxic Toys

posted by Peter Rothberg on 12/15/2008 @ 2:21pm

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For the second straight year, HealthyToys.org is highlighting test results for more than 1,500 toys and children's products. Researchers at the Ecology Center, a Michigan-based nonprofit, tested more than 1,500 popular children's toys for lead, cadmium, arsenic, PVC and other harmful chemicals in time for this year's holiday shopping season. The results are sobering: One in three toys tested were found to contain "medium" or "high" levels of chemicals of concern.

Lead was detected in 20 percent of the toys tested this year. In fact, lead levels in some of the products were well above the 600 parts-per-million (ppm) federal recall standard used for lead paint, and will exceed the US legal limit in February, according to the new Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) regulations. Levels of lead in many toys were significantly above the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended ceiling of 40 ppm of lead in children's products. (Children's jewelry remains the most contaminated product category, maintaining its spot at the top of HealthyToys.org's "worst" list.)

The site's utility allows ease of use for busy parents and children's advocates. Type in "Dora," and several varieties of toys appear. Click on a specific toy, and up pop product ratings based on test results for lead, cadmium, chlorine, arsenic and mercury. The ratings range from low- to high-risk. A primer on the hazards of each substance and a breakdown of which components were tested lets consumers evaluate the risk.

The worst offenders? The High School Musical crown necklace, manufactured by F.A.F Inc,; the Speed Racer Remote Control Mach 5, made by Hot Wheels and something called the Halloween Pumpkin Pin, made by The Christmas Tree Shop, among many others, all carry sufficient toxins to endanger a child's health.

The safest toys? Everything manufactured by the Melissa & Doug brand comes up with high marks. The venerable company Lego's products are also highly rated, while Fisher Price's Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Railway is praised for its low chemical content.

Click here to see how any product or manufacturers checks out or browse by type of toy or product. You can also get involved in the campaign to get dangerous toys off the shelves. Ask the government to sufficiently regulate toy manufactures in order to get toxic levels of chemicals out of the hands and mouths of children; Sign a petition asking the largest toy manufacturers and retailers to reformulate their products and to adopt a corporate chemicals policy, and tell your friends about HealthyToys.org.

Comments (41)

thanks for the link, peter.

hey, you know, not just kids buy "toys". maybe you could find a link.......

merry christmas (hey, i ain't christian, either), mr. rothberg

Posted by frosty zoom at 12/15/2008 @ 2:44pm
PETER, I saw this ad and rushed out to get it for my kid....think there's a problem????

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7358768984043835546

Posted by Mask at 12/15/2008 @ 3:57pm
"my wife isn't into masks, just collars and such ;+[

Posted by frosty zoom at 09/25/2008 @ 2:42pm

Santa has naughty elves up there in Canada.

Posted by Benchrest at 12/15/2008 @ 4:27pm
My wife and I made the mistake of buying "Aquadots" for our daughter last year only to find out (too late) they had been recalled because the "dots" were hallucinogenic if eaten...imagine explaining to a 5 year old why Santa would make a toy that could hurt a child...

Posted by usc1 at 12/15/2008 @ 5:12pm
What a bunch of wimps. Instead of banning everything, why not instead just practice good parenting skills. If your child puts ... if they repeat the actions, use some discipline to teach that you mean it. Somehow, we all survived having toys without Big Govt telling us what to play with. It's just another example of why conservatives feel liberals love totalitarian govt. Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/15/2008 @ 5:45pm

Wow, LVL, why do you bother? You really are a cantankerous old curmudgeon. What next after practically endorsing irresponsible toy makers? It is hard to believe you buy half the things you say. Of course we survived childhood, there weren't half the dreadful and dangerous plastic crapola there is available today. What is wrong with you that you have the gall to suggest people allow their children to put stuff in their mouths and leave it there...no parents allow this, only children do it anyway. You are really out of touch. I guess you are one of those parents who advocates corporal punishment and things like shutting children in their rooms? I wish you wouldn't post here as you don't really ever add anything except "your" delightful "bile" (as per shoethrowing post)! Or post away about your view of politics if you have to, but leave this out please. Really you seem to have something personal against so called "lefties". Perhaps you should take it to the psychiatrist's sofa? When you post like this you sound dangerous. I almost don't want to respond to you as you spread such bad karma, and really there is no point as you aren't ever going to get it, but when it comes to talking about bad parenting and dangerous toys it gets up my nose. Thank goodness you really have no say!

Posted by marilynm at 12/15/2008 @ 9:40pm
The best, and most non-toxic, present you can give your kids is to turn the TV off. Brain studies show that the brain goes into a coma-like state while watching. Release their minds from this slavery, (and your own) and they will be forced to discover their creativity.

Posted by mikecope at 12/16/2008 @ 01:06am
Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/15/2008 @ 5:45pm

Remember.... LVLIB thinks the 1938 Food & Drug Act was "socialism and un-Constitutional"!

(BTW, don't be too sure he isn't checking his grandkids' toys RIGHT NOW!)

Posted by Mask at 12/16/2008 @ 07:23am
Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/16/2008 @ 12:09pm

So if little Larry the Third is chomping on a lead-painted Chinese toy....

fine with Granddad, as long as them meddlin' socialist keep their grubby bureaucratic hands off the Mattel Corporation?

Posted by Mask at 12/16/2008 @ 12:53pm
You know LL, sometimes I get the feeling the 40 to 60 group running the show today wants everything to be alright for everybody everywhere all the time forever. Makes you wonder how we ever survived to our 50's without their insight. Havn't they ever heard of the law of diminishing returns?

Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/16/2008 @ 12:55pm
So CHIP, LVL, does blind trust work well for you? Do you ever worry about the water you drink?

Posted by !immutable at 12/16/2008 @ 1:14pm
TIMMUTABLE

If blind trust's only alternative is a Nanny State par excellance, then I'll take my chances with the BT's..

Oh, with a little bit of common sense and judgement thrown in.

We indivdualists still possess those abilities , you know...

Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/16/2008 @ 2:52pm
Hey lvlib, I hope that penny you shoved up your nose when you were three gives you cancer! And the crayon you ate when you were five, hopefully it has given you madcow disease from beef renderings used to make it back in the dark ages! And that school paste you ate in 2nd grade-maybe by now it has metastisized into prostate cancer, or colon cancer, after sitting around mutating your DNA for all these years! Get my drift??? Like, maybe we know now what we didn't before, and its a good thing to protect our future generations so they are not turned into brain dead idiots from lead or mercury poisoning. And please be sure to eat your tuna, today and everyday, old guys with neurological disorders are a hoot!

Posted by oldintel at 12/16/2008 @ 3:43pm
Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/16/2008 @ 2:52pm

LOL

I think you need to look up the word individualist...

Yes I'm sure you and LVLIB and DARIN are all roughing it together, not using that nasty state provided electricity, water, or roads.

LOL you must be posting from your cabin in the mountains, away from all of us mind-controlled conformists and the so-called nanny state! Are you handcranking your own electricity right now, or have you found out a way to power a generator with chicken scat?

Or let me guess, you're a city clown without a clue? That sounds much more likely since I've never ever heard a real individualist refer to their self as an "individualist".

Posted by TexasFlood at 12/16/2008 @ 3:58pm
Your individualism is an illusion CHIP. You are part of the machine just like the rest of us. You go on believing that only lazy people are on welfare, bankruptcy is only for corporations, scam artists collect unemployment and greedy men in tall towers won't poison you for a buck. "Let do and let pass, the world goes on by itself!"

Posted by !immutable at 12/16/2008 @ 4:06pm
Posted by !immutable at 12/16/2008 @ 1:14pm

You dang socialists! Back when LVLIB was a kid they used to drink raw sewage...and LIKED it. And didn't need none of that Marxist "Clean Water" stuff out of Washington.

And they ate tainted meat....and LOVED it! None of you pansy-ass Stalinist USDA stamp of approval, the Commies.

And they used to play with toy soldiers made of raw, unprocessed uranium and cyanide ore...and then eat 'em for breakfast...and they LIKED IT, they LOVED IT!!!!

Posted by Mask at 12/16/2008 @ 4:23pm
TIMMUTABLE,

Your making an awful lot of assumption about what I think, since I never said any of those things. Your letting your cynicism cloud your judgement about me. erhaps you should get to know me better first.

And my individuality is real and mine to hold onto. Just because you've lost or given up yours, don't pretend I'm in the same park. If you want it back, come over to MY park.

ct

Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/16/2008 @ 4:28pm
TEXASFLOOD

I pay for my electricity and water, old boy, with a check every month, and my taxes cover the roads.

Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/16/2008 @ 4:30pm
Chip,

Sorry I got you all wrong there. I guess it is my individualism that is a fantasy. It is a bitch when reality crashes down on you. If I come over to your side can go I fishing in clean streams and camping in prestine forests? That would be a load off my mind if I could stop stressing about what I see going on around me.

Posted by !immutable at 12/16/2008 @ 4:48pm
*pristine

I hate it when I do that.

Posted by !immutable at 12/16/2008 @ 4:50pm
Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/16/2008 @ 4:27pm 

The first thing I wonder is this: should product liability exist for toys under your framework? That is, if parents are strictly responsible for making sure the toys they give their children are safe (whether they let the kids experiment with them or not), ought they have any remedy against the company that makes the toys if they are NOT safe?

More broadly, though, I think you miss the argument about changing products. I think the point that some of the others were trying to make is that many dangers of toys can be hidden (ex: lead in certain toys). A parent might not pick that up on inspection, and if it's not readily identifiable, you can't expect a child to learn how to pick out the good toys from those with lead in them. To use a slightly more extreme example (but that relies on a similar principle of individual responsibility), what about asbestos? Should companies be obligated, by regulation, to avoid them? If so, why is there such a fundamental difference between the individual responsibility that a worker takes and the individual responsibility that a parent should take.

Furthermore, one of the benefits of regulations (linking back to liability) is that they provide a clear brightline for parents to point to when the corporation makes a dangerous toy. Instead of having to rely on cost/benefit calculi, they can use the "standard of care" encapsulated in existing regulations to make clear that the company failed in its responsibility to make toys that would not endanger people.

Posted by Thrawn at 12/16/2008 @ 5:55pm
So yes Texas, I try.

Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/16/2008 @ 4:40pm

Great! Keep it up! Get off that ole government teat whenever and however possible!

Posted by TexasFlood at 12/17/2008 @ 02:55am
Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/16/2008 @ 4:27pm

And they used to get 30-40 chest X-rays a year...no problems. And just for kicks they go see the above-ground nuke tests in the 50s and pick up cool bits of glassified sand at ground zero soon as the fireball died down.

and they're doing fine!!!! Keep your Commie "safe" food, air, water. Everybody has to take care of themselves...

oh, except for non-existant threats of WMDs from Iraq!

Posted by Mask at 12/17/2008 @ 07:24am
I have never looked at a label to see what the toy is made of. I don't even care about their age specific label.

Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/16/2008 @ 12:09pm

That's right. Liver has no problem letting children play with toys made of weapons grade plutonium, as long as a profit can be made by the toy maker.

Liver may be one of the survivors of the nuclear tests done in Nevada. You know, the people who took vacations to watch that neat little mushroom cloud in the sky plus get a tan from the whole ordeal.

Posted by Wolfgang1 at 12/17/2008 @ 08:43am
take it out and teach them not to. If they repeat the actions, use some discipline to teach that you mean it.

Liverlips is from the old school...you know,a little wall to wall counseling will keep those kids in line!!

Gnawing on toys with lead in them is the least of the problems kids face with elders like Liverhead raising them.

Posted by Wolfgang1 at 12/17/2008 @ 08:47am
Posted by Wolfgang1 at 12/17/2008 @ 08:47am

Well, who knows? Maybe someday Larry will be visited by three Christmas ghosts!

heheh

Posted by Mask at 12/17/2008 @ 10:00am
Well, who knows? Maybe someday Larry will be visited by three Christmas ghosts!

heheh

Posted by Mask at 12/17/2008 @ 10:00am

Yep. Kind of wonder who his Jacob Marley would be? Perhaps one of his double secret probabation under cover agent partners while in the clandestine service of Dean Wormer.

In this case, he'd have to see all the lives he could have spared versus sending people to the work houses and prisons, though Liver appears to favor all forms of punitive corrections including torture.

Posted by Wolfgang1 at 12/17/2008 @ 12:04pm
I have never looked at a label to see what the toy is made of. I don't even care about their age specific label. Posted by livery1 12/16/08 12:09pm

Still trying to find the source of livery's axiom, "Let the toddler beware."

Posted by Sorelish at 12/17/2008 @ 1:04pm
I must say, you guys are all exhibiting typical liberal reactions to what, on the surface, APPEARS to be PETER'S fine- spirited arguement: Namely, incredulity that anyone could be opposed to such a from-the-heart concern, sarcasm, blown-out-of proportion-like interpretations of the opposing view. A typical short sighted you-either-support-this-crusade-or you're an unfeeling-profit-hungry-MONSTERRR!! attitude.

Do you all not consider it possible that man, with proper media education and personal judgement, rather than through over bearing,anti business crusading, bureaucratic idiots who make more decisions calculated to justify their own existance than from common sense, man MIGHT JUST come up with the right answer on his own?

I'm not saying have no regulations: Experience shows that business, if left EXCLUSIVELY to their own devices, will lose sight of the common good sometimes, in favor of profit.

But that same rule applies to government. Let them make your decisions for you too much, and soon, with all the best intentions, they'll be making them all.

Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/17/2008 @ 1:06pm
Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/17/2008 @ 1:06pm

I actually agree with you to a point. There does have to be a balance. But on some things there cannot be leeway. When it comes to those that cannot protect themselves, even from their own parents, regulations should be stronger.

I don't know where you come in on this, and I am probably opening a can of worms, but I would imagine it would be hard to argue that it is wrong to take an unborn child's life and then not want to protect them from their parent's potential ignorance of toxic toys.

Posted by !immutable at 12/17/2008 @ 1:44pm
Ye heer that, TIMMUTABLE??! He dissed us both!! Sayin' r asses are guilty 'o sumpin!LETS GIT'IM!!

:)

Sorry its been a long day

BTW I take your point

Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/17/2008 @ 2:08pm
I think he targeted Sorelish there, but let's get him anyway :)

Just kidding LVL. I do value opposing opinions.

Posted by !immutable at 12/17/2008 @ 2:17pm
LVL, I have a 7 month old grandson, if you know a way I can stop him from putting everything he picks up in his mouth that is a bit of magic I would love to know.

Posted by !immutable at 12/17/2008 @ 2:23pm
You know T, when I here that I'm soo glad my "kid" is now 21.

My only solution was total vigilence for, oh, roughly 18 months and learning the phrase "Don't Do That" in several languages just to break up the repetition.

Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/17/2008 @ 2:28pm
You know T, when I here that I'm soo glad my "kid" is now 21.

My only solution was total vigilence for, oh, roughly 18 months and learning the phrase "Don't Do That" in several languages just to break up the repetition.

Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 12/17/2008 @ 2:28pm
Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/17/2008 @ 1:57pm 

So...I understand that this premise could be taken to very extreme positions, but...what about bad parents? Should children only be protected if they have good ones? I recognize that reliane on a "nanny government" is bad, but it seems like complete reliance on parents to do everything that's necessary is a bit problematic as well.

Posted by Thrawn at 12/17/2008 @ 2:36pm
Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/17/2008 @ 2:39pm

I knew this was going to go to the extreme. It shouldn't, we don't want too much interference by government in our lives. But obvious toxicity in children's toys should not be allowed.

In this case it doesn't effect individual freedom but corporate freedom. Unless you want to say not allowing a parent the opportunity to buy a toddler a toy with lead paint infringes on their freedom?

Posted by !immutable at 12/17/2008 @ 2:55pm
Posted by lvliberty1 at 12/17/2008 @ 2:39pm 

I think there is a serious logical problem in your approach. Though you argue that I can't draw a bright-line, you face the same problem. As of this point, I've already given three arguments why having at least some state regulation over the toys that companies sell is a good thing:

1) Bad parents exist (this is objectively true, and many conservative arguments about the family rely on this premise), and therefore children need some kind of independent protection. This is also why things like Child Protective Services are justified.

2) Even for good parents, many significant modern dangers (like lead) are not immediately apparent.

3) Even for dangers that are clear, having regulations in place provides a clear standard by which to hold corporations liable for their actions.

Unless you're prepared to argue that the state should have no regulatory control in this matter, I think you have exactly the same line-drawing problem that you accuse me of. Regulation should be carefully defined, no doubt, but it is certainly preferable to have some regulation than to have none at all.

Posted by Thrawn at 12/17/2008 @ 5:28pm
Posted by marilynm at 12/15/2008 @ 9:40pm I get the picture. You don't care enough about children to teach them right from wrong. Instead, you and Big Govt must make their decisions; you probably rail against competitive sports for kids, after all, that means someone loses. Walden's Pond was imaginary; try to raise children to live in a real world.

You are a truly presumptuous person, how can you possibly think your experience is the only valid one.

And please don't think you are correct in any assumption you make, you are just being obstreperous, which seems incredible in someone who has raised children of his own!!!

I think you are a phoney, the selfrighteouness that is pouring out of you makes Lady Macbeth seem like a lightweight.

If I didn't feel the pointlessness of refuting your quips...However there are so many other things to do. Have fun chopping up your logs, I wonder if you can do it faster than me, and then we might have a new olympic discipline. And we could sing "sticks and stones..."

Posted by marilynm at 12/17/2008 @ 7:04pm
At LvL.

Posted by marilynm at 12/17/2008 @ 7:05pm
Hey if we want to get toxic toys off the shelves, why don't rich people buy them and donate them to poor peoples' children. That would kill two birds with one stone.

Posted by Darin_the_Big_Fat_Troll at 12/19/2008 @ 07:26am
Damn! I've got to remember that I'm too cranky to post before I've had my caffine.

Posted by Darin_the_Big_Fat_Troll at 12/19/2008 @ 07:27am