Tag: girls

Heavy Metal in Toy Jewelry

  • A nugget of cadmium. (Photo courtesy of the US Dept. of Interior)

The Consumer Product Safety
Commission has been working
to get lead out of kids’ toys.
Now, the government agency
is trying to determine whether
it can do anything about another
toxic chemical found in toys –
a heavy metal called cadmium.
Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

The Consumer Product Safety
Commission has been working
to get lead out of kids’ toys.
Now, the government agency
is trying to determine whether
it can do anything about another
toxic chemical found in toys –
a heavy metal called cadmium.
Mark Brush has more:

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is reacting to a report by the Associated Press that found 12% of children’s jewelry had high levels of cadmium. Some of the pieces tested were almost completely made of cadmium. The heavy metal can cause kidney disease and it’s known to cause cancer.

Scott Wolfson is with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He says that because of all the problems with lead in toy jewelry – the bottom line is that parents should just stay away.

“Over the past four years, we have done more than 50 recalls of more than 180 million units of jewelry. That’s astounding. It reached a point, where CPSC has been recommending to parents that they stop buying children’s metal jewelry for the youngest of kids.”

And some experts say – if you’ve got old toy jewelry in the house – it’s probably a good idea to get rid of it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

BPA Making Little Girls Aggressive?

  • The researcher plans to follow the children to see if the aggressive behavior is lasting. (Photo courtesy of the National Cancer Institute)

A study has found links between a chemical used in some plastics and aggressive behavior in girls. Lester Graham reports on the latest research on BPA:

Transcript

A study has found links between a chemical used in some plastics and aggressive behavior in girls. Lester Graham reports on the latest research on BPA:

BPA, Bisphenol-A, is used in a lot of plastic products including plastic dental fillings, carbon-less paper receipts and most canned food linings.

Researchers tested 249 pregnant women for their exposure to BPA and then followed-up after they gave birth.

Joe Braun is one of the researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Braun says the mothers were given a lengthy questionnaire on the children’s behavior when they turned two.

“And what we found is that the exposure to BPA, or bisphenol-A, in pregnancy was associated with behaviors like aggression or hyperactivity. And this association was strongest in girls and we really didn’t even observe an association in boys.”

The study was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Braun says they’ll continue to follow the children to see if the aggressive behavior is lasting.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Early Puberty

A recent study in the medical journal Pediatrics reports that many girls in the U.S. are entering puberty much easier than normal. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Suzanne Elston discovered, exposure to environmental chemicals may be the culprit: