New Law for Lead in Toys

  • A lead detector finds over 5000 parts per million of lead in this toy. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

A new federal law is forcing
toy manufacturers to get the lead out
of children’s products. Consumer
advocates are cheering the tougher
guidelines. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

A new federal law is forcing
toy manufacturers to get the lead out
of children’s products. Consumer
advocates are cheering the tougher
guidelines. Julie Grant reports:

Consumer advocate Ed Mierzwinski says despite what
you’d assume, toys have not been tested for safety.

Mierzwinski is with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
He says, until now, the government agency in charge – the
Consumer Products Safety Commission – hasn’t been able
to do that.

“It was a rudderless ship. It had no leadership. It had no
money. It had one person testing toys. A guy named bob.
And in 2007 the whole thing just came to a crisis.”

Mierzwinski says 30-million toys were recalled last year.

This new law requires all children’s products meet tougher
new standards for toxic materials. It also gives the
Consumer Product Safety Commission more money, staff,
and authority.

But the law doesn’t take effect until February – so toys for
sale this holiday season could still be a problem.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Lead Soil in Urban Gardens

  • The veggies in your garden could have lead in them (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

More Americans have started
planting their own gardens in recent
years. But it turns out a lot of
urban gardens are contaminated with
lead. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

More Americans have started
planting their own gardens in recent
years. But it turns out a lot of
urban gardens are contaminated with
lead. Julie Grant reports:

Last year 22% of Americans planted a garden.

Wendy Heiger-Bernays is professor of environmental health
at Boston University.

She says if you have an urban garden, she would expect to find heavy metals, especially lead, in the soil. It comes from old garbage, dripping oil, and peeling paint.

“Older homes have been demonstrated to leach lead from the home through the drip line and into the soil.”

Even small amounts of lead in the blood can cause learning disabilities in children.

Heiger-Bernays says you don’t have to throw away this year’s veggies. Just wash them well. And peel root vegetables.

And to get ready for next year, Heiger-Bernays says have your
soil tested. If there’s lead, add a foot of clean compost to the top of the garden bed. Next Spring plant only in that top layer.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Toxic Toys on Store Shelves

  • A lead detector finds over 5000 parts per million of lead in this toy. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

Over the past year, the federal government has recalled more than 25
million toys because of unsafe levels of lead. But as Rebecca Williams
reports… some experts say there could still be unsafe toys on shelves
that have not been recalled:

Transcript

Over the past year, the federal government has recalled more than 25
million toys because of unsafe levels of lead. But as Rebecca Williams
reports… some experts say there could still be unsafe toys on shelves
that have not been recalled:



The Consumer Product Safety Commission has its own investigators. But
it does not have the authority to test toys before they reach the
market. That’s why it relies on toy companies, doctors and consumers
to report problems before recalling toys.


Rebecca Morley is the executive director of the National Center for
Healthy Housing. It’s trying to eliminate lead poisoning in children.


She says start with the toy recall list. But she says there could be
other toys that contain lead that haven’t been recalled yet:


“I would also err on the side of getting kids things that are not
painted. I wouldn’t get jewelry. I would avoid some of the vinyl toys
that we are seeing that are likely to contain lead that are on the
recall list.”


Morley says the only reliable way for parents to test for lead is to
send the toys to a lab.


For the Environment Report I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Study: Low Lead Levels Still Dangerous

A new study finds that exposure to even very low lead levels can cause
brain damage in children. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A new study finds that exposure to even very low lead levels can cause
brain damage in children. Rebecca Williams reports:


Children can be exposed to lead through lead-based paint in homes, or
lead in imported toys or other products.


The researchers looked at children with lead levels in their blood that
were below the level the federal government considers to be dangerous.


They studied the children over a six year period. And found that
children exposed to lead at very low levels had reduced IQ scores by 5
points.


Richard Canfield is a senior author of the study in the journal
Environmental Health Perspectives:


“The evidence at this point is quite strong that meaningful effects on
children’s cognitive performance are due to small amounts of lead and
in fact, amounts below what the current regulations allow.”


Canfield says no one knows at this point if there is any safe level of
lead exposure.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Detecting Lead in Toys

  • Bill Radosevich tests the sword on the lego creature Phyllis Gallzo's son plays with. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

Fisher Price recently recalled 10 million toys containing lead paint and tiny magnets. The news is making health officials and many parents wonder about other
objects children play with. In the past, testing objects for lead has been time consuming,
but new technology could make lead detection in everyday objects easier and faster. Lisa
Ann Pinkerton has more:

Transcript

Fisher Price recently recalled 10 million toys containing lead paint and tiny magnets. The news is making health officials and many parents wonder about other
objects children play with. In the past, testing objects for lead has been time consuming,
but new technology could make lead detection in everyday objects easier and faster. Lisa
Ann Pinkerton has more:


In a canvas shopping bag, Phyllis Gallzo has 3 of her son’s favorite toys. In her hand is
one made of Legos that looks like an alien robot creature. She’s afraid it could contain
lead:


“Listening to the news and concern about toys coming from China, I was very
concerned my son getting exposure to the chemicals he really didn’t need. So I brought in
the toys that he plays with mostly.”


Eighty percent of America’s toys are made in China, so Gallzo’s come to a free lead
screening event held by the Ohio Network for the Chemically Injured to find out about her
son’s toys. The action figure she holds is sporting a long silver sword. It’s pockmarked,
from being chewed on by Gallzo’s 8 year old son. If the sword was manufactured with
lead-based plastic or paint the toy could be giving her son small doses of lead and slowly
poisoning him. Lead is a neuro-toxin and has been linked to learning disabilities and lower
IQ’s.


Usually, Gallzo would have to surrender her son’s toy to be destroyed in a lab to figure
out what its made of, but today a new type of technology is being used. Bill Radosevich,
of the company Thermo Scientific is going to zap the plastic sword with an X-ray gun
his company’s designed. In the first 5 seconds, the toy’s elements pop up on a computer
screen:


“About 6000 parts per million of zinc, we’re seeing a little bit of copper, that’s probably
part of the coloring….I’m definitely not seeing lead.”


Gallzo was lucky, her son’s favorite toy is free of lead. But beside Radosevich, is a
suitcase filled with toys that didn’t pass the test. On display are low brand or no brand
items, like plastic teething rings, a simple black snorkel, children’s jewelry and marti gras
beads. All objects kids have been known to suck and chew on. Radosevich says they all
contain lead in excess of 600 parts per million, the American limit for consumer
products:


“I’m less concerned about a hair piece than I am about something that’s supposed to be put into a
child’s mouth.”


Radosevich’s testing device looks like a Faser gun from an old Star Trek show. It uses x-
ray technology and it’s not cheap, they go for 30,000 dollars a piece. Radosevich
says metal industries and archaeologists already use the device for different purposes, but
he thinks product importers and toy retailers might be interested in them too. Michael
Zigenhagan, owns the toystore Play Matters and he says testing toys for lead is not his
responsibility:


“I don’t think that’s within the scope of a retailer’s capabilities. We wouldn’t be
asking national big box retailers to create their own testing arms for the products they
carry. That’s ultimately the manufacturer’s job to do that.”


But the way toys are manufactured in China is a tangled supply chain, with various
components of a toy coming from different factories. Rachel Weintrub is with the
Consumer Federation of America. She says importers are putting too much trust in the
manufacturers they contract with. Her group is lobbying Congress to require US
companies, such as Mattel, to make sure a toy’s components aren’t contaminated before they’re assembled in China:


“If it were required that paint be tested for safety before the paint were used on the
product, this huge harm would be prevented.”


Weintrub says waiting until a product is in the supply chain and issuing a recall isn’t
completely effective. She says recalls never get all the defective products back, and
ultimately that leaves toys in the marketplace and children in potential harm.


For the Environment Report, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

E-Waste Polluting Overseas

  • Exposed to toxic chemicals such as lead and mercury, workers stay at the scrap yards for the $130-a-month pay. (photo by Ted Land)

At your home, chances are your TV, computer and other electronic gear were made
overseas. That’s because it’s cheaper to make them there. And it’s cheaper to get rid of old
electronics overseas. Someday, your old cell phone or CD player might end up right back
where it started: in China. Ted Land visited a Chinese city where electronic waste, or e-waste, is shipped by the thousands of tons. Pollution from that waste is threatening the
health of people who live there:

Transcript

At your home, chances are your TV, computer and other electronic gear were made
overseas. That’s because it’s cheaper to make them there. And it’s cheaper to get rid of old
electronics overseas. Someday, your old cell phone or CD player might end up right back
where it started: in China. Ted Land visited a Chinese city where electronic waste , or e-
waste, is shipped by the thousands of tons. Pollution from that waste is threatening the
health of people who live there:


The city of Taizhou is in eastern China. It’s an industrial port city. A lot of the people
who travel here are here on business. Ships loaded with new products are often headed
for the United States. But it’s not just what leaves this city that makes business boom…
it’s also what’s coming in:


“I know it’s polluted here but it’s not a big deal. The most important thing is my
children, that’s the reason why I found work here.”


Liu Qinzhen works at this Taizhou scrap plant. It’s the final stop for some of the nearly
4,000 tons of scrap and e-waste that enters the port each day. Liu is one of hundreds of
workers who squat under an outdoor pavilion picking apart old circuit boards and wires.
She works 9 hours a day, 7 days a week, earning about 130 dollars a month.


The work is dangerous. She and the other workers are exposed to harmful chemicals
from e-waste such as lead and mercury. The 23-year-old moved here for this job because
she needed to support her two kids:


“I used to work in a shoe factory but then I had a baby and it’s not convenient to have a
baby there so I moved here even though the pay is the same. I come from the countryside.
You can’t earn money on a farm.”


The plant where she works is considered safer than scrapping these materials in the
countryside where families work in their front yards and in their homes. They melt
circuit boards and burn wires to extract bits of valuable copper and gold.


Environmental organizations have documented evidence that what’s left over after the
valuable metals are retrieved is dumped into local rivers and streams:


(Land:) “I noticed when we arrived they shut down the other door of that other shop?


“They are doing the same kind of e-waste, but they are afraid of being discovered by
others.”


Afraid, says Taizhou resident Chen Yijun because what they’re doing is illegal. Chinese
law forbids the import of e-waste, yet piles of foreign electronics litter the countryside
and pour into scrap plants daily.


Yijun is a teacher at Taizhou #1 High School, where students are concerned about what
the e-waste industry is doing to their environment. They’ve been testing the water in
local streams, looking for signs of harmful chemicals:


On this day they draw several gallons from a stream. The banks are littered with piles of
electrical cable. Chen Zhengyan has been working on the project for years:


“The frogs here are different from frogs in other places because sometimes they have
extra limbs. We are sure the pollution is from e-waste because in this area there is no
other industry.”


Chen and her colleagues say this pollution is harmful to people, too. They tell local
government officials such as Liang Xiaoyong that something has to be done to improve
the situation. But, Liang says there’s only so much the government can do to combat an
illegal industry that so many residents make their living off of. He says cutting off the
imports is difficult because sometimes e-waste is hidden in with other scrap. He doesn’t
deny the waste industry is a big business here:


This industry generates a lot of tax money for us in the form of tariffs. So, if this industry
doesn’t exist, the Taizhou harbor won’t survive.


Jim Puckett is coordinator of the Basel Action Network, a Seattle based group that
confronts toxic trade issues around the world. He says it’s not that the Chinese
government is unwilling to stop imports, it’s simply unable to stop them.


“They’ve banned the import, the problem is they can’t control that flow, it’s just coming at
them container load after container load through various ports and they can’t possibly check every
single one.”


American waste is literally fueling the fires burning electronics that dot the countryside in
China. And many of the original owners of this gear had taken it to be recycled, and
thought they’d done the right thing. But, often it ends up on a ship, headed for scrap
yards overseas.


About seven thousand miles away from Taizhou, practically the other side of the globe,
there’s a warehouse in Springfield, Illinois stacked with old electronic gear.


The Illinois State Department of Central Management Services, or CMS, disposes of old
state property, including old copy machines, computers, and monitors. In 2005, CMS
was contacted by the Basel Action Network with some disturbing information. The
group was finding State of Illinois computers dumped in developing countries around the
world. Curtis Howard is manager of CMS state and federal surplus property:


“It hit me pretty hard, the fact that, not realizing, you know I always look at it, these guys
were here, they come in, they bid on our property, you know I’m maximizing the return on
the state’s investment, I’m doing a good job, I never really thought about the tail end of
the dragon.”


Basel Action Network coordinator Jim Puckett says if the Chinese are unable to stop the
imports, then it’s up to the United States to control what they export:


Other countries have laws forbidding it, laws controlling it, but in the United States, we
don’t even have a law to control this export.


The U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that have not signed and ratified the Basel
Convention, an international treaty that bans hazardous waste exports. That means if
anything is going to be done to stop electronic waste from polluting countries overseas,
it’s going to be up to the States to take action.


It starts with buying electronics from companies that make products that are more easily
recycled, and ends with making sure old electronic gear is getting into the hands of
responsible recyclers who don’t simply ship the e-waste to scrap yards overseas.


For the Environment Report, I’m Ted Land.

Related Links

Coast Guard Scraps Live Fire Plan

The U.S. Coast Guard has abandoned its plan to conduct “live fire” weapons training on the Great Lakes. Steve Carmody has more:

Transcript

The U.S. Coast Guard has abandoned its plan to conduct “live fire” weapons training on the Great Lakes. Steve Carmody has more:


The Coast Guard had wanted to establish 34 “live fire” zones across the Great Lakes. The proposal ran into opposition partly involving concerns over the potential environmental impact.


Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak says thousands of rounds of spent ammunition would have been dumped onto the bottom of the Great Lakes.

“We’re not going to let the Coast Guard dump 7,000 pounds of lead in the Great Lakes. No other industry could do it, so they certainly were not going to be allowed to do it. And, they still really haven’t answered the real basic question, ‘why is it necessary to do it now?'”


In a written statement, the Coast Guard said it would reconsider its “live fire” proposal, including the location of water training areas and the use of “environmentally friendly alternatives to the lead ammunition” currently used.

Congressman Stupak says it will probably be several years before the Coast Guard tries to put forward a new “live fire” proposal.


For the Environment Report, I’m Steve Carmody.

China Exporting Dangerous Metal

US environmental groups and regulators are concerned about lead in products imported from China. Lead is commonly used in Chinese manufacturing because it’s cheap and flexible. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

US environmental groups and regulators are concerned about lead in products imported from China.

Lead is commonly used in Chinese manufacturing because it’s cheap and flexible. Rebecca

Williams reports:


Earlier this year, a Minneapolis boy died from lead poisoning after swallowing a toy charm sold with a

pair of Reebok shoes. The charm was found to be 99% lead.


Scott Wolfson is a spokesperson for the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. He says the

commission’s especially concerned about imported toy jewelry made with lead.


“We are an agency responsible for recalling over 160 million pieces of children’s jewelry over the past

three years. Much of it has actually come from China.”


Wolfson says the commission is pressuring Chinese government officials and manufacturers to

switch to alternate metals.


The Sierra Club is suing the US government to stop the sale of toy jewelry made with lead.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Defense Dept. To Clean Up Military Mess?

The Defense Department will be paying for a study to find ways to remove ammunition barrels the military dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. For 30 years, environmentalists have been asking the government to clean up the mess. Mike Simonson reports that the federal government is now paying for a study to find ways to remove the barrels:

Transcript

The Defense Department will be paying for a study to find ways to remove ammunition
barrels the military dumped into Lake Superior during the Cold War. For 30 years,
environmentalists have been asking the government to clean up the mess. Mike
Simonson reports that the federal government is now paying for a study to find ways to
remove the barrels:


The Red Cliff band of Lake Superior Chippewa will study ways
to remove the barrels of munitions. Documents show that between 1959
and 1962, the Department of Defense had 1,437 drums dumped into Lake
Superior. It amounts to about 400 tons of munitions containing toxic chemicals such as
PCBs, mercury, lead, chromium, benzene and even uranium.


Patricia DePerry is the Red Cliff Tribal Chairwoman. She says the barrels must be
removed:


“Not only the time is of essence, it’s the not knowing what the contaminants have been
doing at the bottom of the lake.”


DePerry says not only is the ecology of the lake at risk, but the barrels of munitions lie
within a quarter mile of Duluth, Minnesota’s drinking water intake.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mike Simonson.

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Study: Epa Ozone Standards Harmful

A new federal study finds ground level ozone in the air can cause lung damage and lead to premature death at levels the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. The new study was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the EPA itself. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

A new federal study finds ground level ozone in the air can cause lung
damage and lead to premature death at levels the Environmental
Protection Agency considers safe. The new study was funded by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the EPA itself. The
GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:


Ozone is the major ingredient of smog. Ground level ozone can make
asthma worse and can even cause permanent lung damage.


A new study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives says the
EPA’s current standards aren’t good enough. The authors say breathing
ozone at levels the EPA considers safe can increase the risk of premature
death. The authors say if there is a safe level of ozone, it’s at very low
concentrations… far below current EPA standards.


But there’s a problem. Cities already have trouble meeting the current
EPA standards. The EPA says more than 100 million Americans live in
areas that exceed what the EPA considers safe.


The EPA is reviewing the scientific evidence on ozone to decide whether
to revise its standards further.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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