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Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Lamorinda Moms Club

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Groups Release Guide to Toxins in Toys Print Email
Dec.5th, 2007 -— Tests on more than 1,200 children's products, most of them still on store shelves, found that 35 percent contain lead — many with levels far above the federal recall standard used for lead paint.

A Hannah Montana card game case, a Go Diego Go! backpack and Circo brand shoes were among the items with excessive lead levels in the tests performed by a coalition of environmental health groups across the country.

Only 20 percent of the toys and other products had no trace of lead or harmful chemicals, according to the results being released Wednesday by the Michigan-based Ecology Center along with the national Center for Health, Environment and Justice and groups in eight other states.
Of the 1,268 items tested, 23 were among millions of toys recalled this year.
Mattel Inc. recalled more than 21 million Chinese-made toys on fears they were tainted with lead paint and tiny magnets that children could accidentally swallow. Mattel's own tests on the toys found that they had lead levels up to 200 times the accepted limit.

The Consumer Action Guide to Toxic Chemicals in Toys, which is available to the public at http://www.healthytoys.org, shows how the commonly purchased children's products rank in terms of containing lead, cadmium, arsenic and other harmful chemicals. It comes in time for holiday shopping — and amid the slew of recalls.

Easthope said 17 percent of the children's products tested had levels of lead above the 600 parts per million federal standard that would trigger a recall of lead paint. Jewelry products were the most likely to contain the high levels of lead, the center said, with 33.5 percent containing levels above 600 ppm. Among the toys that tested above that limit was a Hannah Montana Pop Star Card Game, whose case tested at 3,056 ppm.

The center and its testing partners found The First Years brand First Keys, Fisher-Price's Rock-a-Stack and B.R. Bruin's Stacking Cups were among the 20 percent that contained none of the nine chemicals.
"There's a lot of doom and gloom about lead in the products — people only hear about the recalls," said Jeff Gearhart, the Ecology Center's campaign director. "Companies can make clean products. Our sampling shows that there's no reason to put lead in a product."

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.

On the Net:
* The Consumer Action Guide to Toxic Chemicals in Toys: http://www.healthytoys.org
* Toy Industry Association: http://www.toyassociation.org
* List of recalled toys available at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission: http://www.cpsc.gov