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

Unusual Lead Poisoning Case

  • Most US communities have low rates of childhood lead poisoning - averaging 1.2% of the total population. But with the new influx of Burmese immigrants, Fort Wayne’s exposure rate rose to 12%. (Photo by Erika Celeste)

Lead was banned from paint in
1978. And it was taken out of
gasoline a few years later. So
with less lead in the environment,
the problem of lead poisoning in
kids has been decreasing. But
every once in a while, health officials
find a dramatic spike in the number
of lead poisoning cases, and the race
is on to find the source. Erika Celeste reports on the poisoning
of some Burmese refugees:

Transcript

Lead was banned from paint in
1978. And it was taken out of
gasoline a few years later. So
with less lead in the environment,
the problem of lead poisoning in
kids has been decreasing. But
every once in a while, health officials
find a dramatic spike in the number
of lead poisoning cases, and the race
is on to find the source. Erika Celeste reports on the poisoning
of some Burmese refugees:

Three years ago, Mah We took her baby daughter and fled the unrest in Burma to Fort Wayne, Indiana. It’s the largest Burmese settlement outside of their home country. They wanted their new daughter to have an American name. They settled on Snow White after seeing some the Disney movie.

She is now three and a half years old.

Celeste: Hi, Do you like school?

Snow White: “School, yes.”

Celeste: “What’s your favorite thing at school?”

Translator: “Play with my friends.”

Snow White has had a lot of challenges in her young life. Blood tests revealed Snow White had lead poisoning. Exposure to lead can cause brain damage, I-Q loss, behavioral problems, and in rare cases, death.

Most US communities have low rates of childhood lead poisoning – averaging 1.2% of the total population. But with the new influx of Burmese immigrants, Fort Wayne’s exposure rate rose to 12%.

Amy Hastings is with the Allen County Health Department:

“We kind of assumed they had been poisoned when they were in the camps, and it just wasn’t identified until they got to the United States and so we conducted it like a normal lead investigation and found no lead hazards.”

But then new siblings were born into some of the Burmese families. At birth, the babies’ blood levels were normal, yet within a few months those levels became dangerously high.

Most small children get poisoned when they crawl on the floor, get dust from old lead paint on their hands, and then stick their hands in their mouths.

“The babies weren’t old enough to do that yet, and so why they had a blood lead level of in the 20s, made no sense to us.”

With the cases mounting and the source still unknown, the Centers for Disease Control helped Hastings assemble an investigative team. They set up a make shift field office and went door to door in the Burmese apartment complexes.

“We were hunting around for anything we could find that these kids might be getting into. We tested food, we tested toys, anything we thought that babies could have come into contact with.”

They tested more kids. And took samples of various household items. Then a break came in the case. Two homemade Burmese medicines – daw tway and daw kyin— geared specifically to small children for tummy aches came back with extremely high levels of lead.

Hastings was relieved to finally have an answer. But it didn’t solve the problem.

Aye Ma is a Burmese translator. She says many parents didn’t believe Hastings are her team.

“The mother was pretty upset. She referred back to her ancestors, ‘oh my ancestors have been using this medicine and how can you come and out of the blue tell me this is no good and it has lead in it?’”

While some families are taking the advice to stop using the medicine, others are still skeptical. The medicines are banned in the US. But they can still get a hold of them through family connections back home.

Hastings says she’s still seeing new cases of lead poisoning. But because she isn’t certain the medicines are the only cause, educating the families about lead poisoning remains important.

Officials have set up a pilot preschool program for kids like Snow White. The program will help the kids catch up through, speech, cognitive, and nutrition therapy. So far it seems to be a great success.

(sound of kids playing)

While this was an unusual case for the US, the CDC reports that many traditional medicines from East Indian, Middle Eastern, Western Asian, and Hispanic cultures still contain lead.

For The Environment Report, I’m Erika Celeste.

Related Links

Lead in Toys, Despite Law

  • This toy was recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission because it violated federal lead paint standards. (Photo courtesy of the CPSC)

This year, there have been far fewer
toys recalled because of lead contamination
than in past years. But Rebecca Williams
reports, even with a tough new federal
law limiting lead, toys with illegal
levels of lead are still being found
on store shelves this shopping season:

Transcript

This year, there have been far fewer
toys recalled because of lead contamination
than in past years. But Rebecca Williams
reports, even with a tough new federal
law limiting lead, toys with illegal
levels of lead are still being found
on store shelves this shopping season:

So far this year, more than one million toys and kids’ products have been recalled because they contain high levels of lead. That’s actually a big drop from the past two years.

The toy industry, government officials, and even environmental groups all say this holiday season is safer.

“This is all due to parent and consumer demands and outrage over what’s happened in the past.”

That’s Mike Shriberg. He’s with the Ecology Center. Parents were outraged because lead exposure can cause the loss of IQ points, brain damage and even death. The American Academy of Pediatrics says there is no safe level of lead exposure.

But Shriberg says there’s a little good news here. Most toy companies and retailers have heard parents’ demands.

“Companies are trying to prove their safety to customers. And so, many of them have announced voluntary standards above federal laws. They’re more motivated to test and show that their products are safer and that’s where we’re seeing some of the improvement.”

Both Walmart and Toys R’ Us responded by email to questions from The Environment Report. Both retailers say they are thoroughly testing toys, and in some cases, hold their suppliers to stronger standards than the federal law.

But Mike Shriberg says the news is not all good.

“We’re still finding about 3% of toys we tested actually exceed recall levels which means they have lead above level deemed to be safe by federal laws.”

The government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission is in charge of making sure toys are safe. Three billion toys are sold in the US each year. The federal government does not test every kind of toy.

Nychelle Fleming is with the commission. She says the commission has a team of people testing toys, and inspectors do random toy checks at ports and retail stores. But she says the commission also relies on toy makers, advocacy groups and even parents to report problems with toys – including lead contamination.

“Unfortunately there’s no real way I can tell shoppers to know how to look out for or avoid. I think the best way for shoppers to know that is to really be in loop with the commission, to be a part of getting our recall announcements directly so you don’t have to question or wonder which product is affected.”

The Toy Industry Association says it’s not just the government’s job to make sure toys are safe. It says the industry has undertaken an unprecedented level of inspections and re-inspections to keep lead out of toys.

But some shoppers are not getting a clear message about lead in toys. Like these people we caught up with at a Target store.

“When you’ve got little kids that say I want this or I want that when they see it on TV or in the store it’s kind of hard to balance that against whether something has lead or not.”

“Usually they’ve been pulled haven’t they? I don’t know! Maybe they haven’t.”

“Well I just watch for it because I know you’re supposed to, but I don’t know the guidelines or the limits or anything like that, I really don’t.”

So clearly, not everybody knows what to look for when they’re shopping.

Mike Shriberg with the Ecology Center says it really shouldn’t be this hard.

“Part of our message as parents is, your lives are already complicated. The fact that our federal chemical regulatory system is completely failing means that really you almost have to be a chemist to do your shopping and that’s not… that shouldn’t be.”

Shriberg says, when it comes to lead, you can be a little more confident this holiday season. But he says there’s still no guarantee that all toys will be lead-free.

He says you should avoid children’s metal jewelry and toys from vending machines. He says simpler toys, like unpainted wood toys, tend to be the safest choices.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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New Regs for Old Homes

  • The rules the EPA is proposing would apply to homes built before 1978. (Photo source: Daniel Schwen at Wikimedia Commons)

Renovating old homes or apartments can
mean scraping or sanding lead paint.
That lead paint dust can settle where
children play. That can put them at risk
for learning disabilities. Shawn Allee reports why the government’s
tightening rules on home renovation:

Transcript

Renovating old homes or apartments can
mean scraping or sanding lead paint.
That lead paint dust can settle where
children play. That can put them at risk
for learning disabilities. Shawn Allee reports why the government’s
tightening rules on home renovation:

The Environmental Protection Agency just finished rules about home renovation and lead paint, but children’s advocacy groups said they weren’t strong enough.

Anita Weinberg is with Lead-Safe Illinois. She says some rehab contractors are trained on how to handle lead paint safely, but only some property owners are required to hire them. Weinberg says the rules didn’t apply if there were no kids in that unit at the time.


“That’s perfectly fine, but tomorrow you turn around and sell your home to a family with children. And the work that was done, if it wasn’t done safely, there’s certainly the possibility there’s still going to be a lead hazards in that home.”

So, now the EPA’s proposing, if you hire a rehab contractor at all, that contractor must be trained to handle lead paint – regardless of whether children live there now or not.

The rules would apply to homes built before 1978.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Your Pet and Toxic Toys

  • The government does not regulate pet products at all. An environmental group looked at pet toys and found some were contaminated with lead. (Photo by Jessi Ziegler)

An examination of pet products
on store shelves found some of
them were contaminated. Lester
Graham reports there is currently
no regulation of toxins in pet
toys and other products:

Transcript

An examination of pet products
on store shelves found some of
them were contaminated. Lester
Graham reports there is currently
no regulation of toxins in pet
toys and other products:

Your puppy’s chew toy might be poisoning him.

The government does not regulate pet products at all. An environmental group looked at pet toys and found some were contaminated with lead.

Mike Shriberg is with the Ecology Center.

“We found over a quarter of pet products had detectable levels of lead in them. Over 7% would have been recalled if they were children’s products.”

Signs of lead poisoning in dogs can be more aggressiveness – even toward the pet’s owner – or withdrawn behavior.

So, how do you tell whether your pet’s toy or bedding is safe?

“There’s no real way to tell. Our data base, healthystuff-dot-org is a first step. But, remember, we only tested a small percentage of the millions of pet products out there.”

Shriberg’s group is calling for the government start doing something to stop toxic chemicals such as lead from being used in pet products.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

A Hidden Danger in the Garden

  • Reporter Karen Kelly and her daughter, Hannah, gather soil from their garden to be tested for toxins. (Photo by Karen Kelly)

All over the country, first-time
gardeners are harvesting their ripe
tomatoes and leafy greens. Gardening –
especially in cities – is thriving.
But Karen Kelly reports on a hidden
danger that isn’t always easy to detect:

Transcript

All over the country, first-time
gardeners are harvesting their ripe
tomatoes and leafy greens. Gardening –
especially in cities – is thriving.
But Karen Kelly reports on a hidden
danger that isn’t always easy to detect:

(sound of little girl in garden)

It’s our first vegetable garden and my daughter and I are looking for some ripe veggies to have for dinner.

It was the highlight of our summer – planting the cucumbers and the eggplant and watching the tomato vines grow higher and higher until we couldn’t even reach the top.

Then I read a story that they had discovered lead in the White House vegetable garden. Exposure to too much lead can cause brain damage, especially in children. And as I read the description of the type of yard that would likely contain lead, I realized that our garden met all of the criteria.

We live in a house more than 50 years old. It’s in an older neighborhood that would have been exposed to residue from leaded gasoline. And we live in a fairly large city -Ottawa, Canada – near a busy road.

So I decided to get our soil tested for lead.

(sound of phone call)

I started by calling the city and other government agencies– no luck. I tried looking for labs in the yellow pages. Those didn’t work out. I moved on to garden centers, a local university, and a local research farm. No one could talk to me.

Finally, I got in touch with a lead expert in Indianapolis, Indiana. He asked me to send him some samples in plastic lunch bags.

“Okay, I just scraped off a place with no wood chips. Okay, so we tested the eggplant, the tomatoes, the lettuce and the cucumbers. Well, we need to do the peppers too, because the peppers are way over here.”

I sent the bags to Gabriel Fillipelli at Indiana University-Purdue University – and waited impatiently. Ripe tomatoes and cucumbers were piling up.

Finally, he got back to us.

“What I found with the samples you took from your soil was relatively high lead values. I was a little bit surprised. Some of them were actually above the EPA levels for playground soils, which is 400 parts per million.”

Great. I figure there’s no chance we could eat these vegetables. But Fillipelli says that’s not the case.

“The other vegetables, like the cucumbers, the eggplants, and peppers – they have very resistant outer skin so as long as you wash them well, very little lead can absorb inside those. The biggest risk you find with vegetables is not lead being sucked up by the roots and poisoning you, it’s actually the soil particles that cling on to the some of these vegetables, meaning beets or carrots or potatoes or, strangely enough, lettuce.”

In terms of children, Fillipelli says the real problem is letting them play in the bare dirt. He actually says covering it with grass or mulch would be safer.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t grow vegetables in a city. You can use containers, or build raised beds with clean soil, and use mulch in between.

It’s still a cheap source of healthy food, and a great way to teach kids about nature, biology and, unfortunately, pollution.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Lead Bullets and Hunters’ Meat

  • Condors are harmed by eating meat contaminated with lead from hunters' bullets (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Hunters have been using lead
bullets for decades to kill game with
little, if any, side effects. But new
research finds that hunters may need
to use more caution when choosing their
bullets. Reporter Sadie Babits has this
story on a hidden danger that’s just
coming to light:

Transcript

Hunters have been using lead
bullets for decades to kill game with
little, if any, side effects. But new
research finds that hunters may need
to use more caution when choosing their
bullets. Reporter Sadie Babits has this
story on a hidden danger that’s just
coming to light:

Tony Hanson has been hunting wild game all of his life. And over the years, he’s
grown pretty attached to what he considers the most cost effective, most efficient
bullet around – a lead bullet.

“It matters a lot to a hunter. You are counting on the range of that bullet. You know
what the bullet can do and you know what the gun will do. You’re out there to take
an animals life, and that’s not something we take lightly.”

The typical bullet used by most hunters is made up of about 65% lead. The bullet is
capped off with a copper jacket. These bullets are designed to handle high speeds and
to kill an animal quickly without breaking apart and sending tiny lead fragments
throughout the meat. Hanson works with the country’s largest conservation group –
Michigan United Conservation Clubs. He says he’s not concerned about possible
lead poisoning.

“Generally speaking, if you make the shot you are supposed to make you’re not
getting any edible meat. It’s not something that really weighs into my thought too
much. ”

Like Hansen, most hunters don’t give lead bullets a second thought. So why worry?

Well, early last spring, food pantries across North Dakota and Minnesota were
advised not to give out donated ground venison. That’s after lab tests revealed tiny
lead fragments in some of the meat.

It generated enough interest that North Dakota launched a study involving some 700
people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worked with North
Dakota’s Health Department. They found that people who ate a lot of wild game
tended to have higher lead levels in their blood than those who ate very little or no
wild game.

The results validated similar research involving California Condors. The Condors
almost went extinct in large part because of lead poisoning. You see, the birds would
feed on gut piles and carcasses left by hunters, and, if those hunters used lead bullets,
the condors would get sick.

That old problem still exists. Lead poisoning remains the number one obstacle
standing in the way of restoring the California Condors.

(sound of birds outdoors)

Rick Watson is the vice president of the Peregrine Fund in Boise, Idaho. He says
they’ve tracked the birds through satellites to see what they feed on. They’ve also
shot deer in the same way a hunter would, using typical lead bullets. The animals
were then x-rayed.

“And we were astounded by the results. Typically out of the 30 or so deer all of them
had fragmented lead bullets in them. And we were also amazed about the actual
extent the lead fragments are sprayed throughout the meat.”

Watson says about 5% of a bullet does break apart and some of it gets into the meat.
He’s now working on another study to see the impact of lead bullets on people.
That’s involved shooting more deer, sending the meat to random processors, and
then running that meat through an x-ray machine. The findings, he says support
what North Dakota discovered late last fall.

“And again what we found that 30% of the packages of meat that came back had at
least one fragment of lead in them.”

Not enough to make a person sick, but enough to raise a red flag. Watson says the
solution is simple. Hunters need to use non-toxic lead bullets. But most hunters
aren’t convinced. So-called green bullets are about twice the cost of lead bullets and
hunters don’t believe they are as efficient.

Hunters say they want independent research done before anybody starts making the
switch to non toxic bullets.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

Shops Happy With New Lead Rule

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

Kids consignment shops have been worried about a new law limiting lead and other chemicals in children’s products.
Julie Grant reports store owners are glad to finally have some answers from the federal government:

Transcript

Kids consignment shops have been worried about a new law limiting lead and other chemicals in children’s products.
Julie Grant reports store owners are glad to finally have some answers from the federal government:

Amanda Cingle in is manager at Once Upon a Child. It’s part of a franchise of 300 stores that sell used items for kids.

She says the owner was concerned the new law would mean they’d have to throw out their existing inventory – or spend many thousands of dollars having it all tested for chemicals.

But now the government’s Consumer Products Safety Commission says the law will only applies to new products, not those being re-sold.

“We’re so relieved. We don’t have to worry anymore. The owner’s worry was that she was going to have to close her doors and never reopen.”

Cingle says the store has an environmental mission – to reuse and recycle products – so she’s glad they don’t have to throw everything away.

But she’s also pleased that new products will be made with less harmful ingredients.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Lead Poisoning and California Condors

  • Adult California Condor in flight (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

It’s been decades, but there are now more California Condors in the wild than there
are in captivity. That’s thanks to two condor chicks who recently left their nests in
the Grand Canyon. As Sadie Babits reports, biologists are thrilled, but one of the
problems that caused the decline in condors still exists:

Transcript

It’s been decades, but there are now more California Condors in the wild than there
are in captivity. That’s thanks to two condor chicks who recently left their nests in
the Grand Canyon. As Sadie Babits reports, biologists are thrilled, but one of the
problems that caused the decline in condors still exists:


At the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, there’s a wood fence that
protects the California Condors that live behind it.

“Just lately in order to minimize the exposure of our adult breeding pairs to humans,
we’ve built this security fence or actually it’s a visual barrier, we call it.”

That’s Bill Heinrich. He overseas the California Condor Recovery program at the
Center.

There is this one small break in the fence – a part that hasn’t been built yet. And
behind some chain link, I can see some very large birds…

Sadie: “Is that a Condor right there??”

Bill: “Yeah… you can see an adult condor standing, a pair of them on a perch.”

Sadie: “Ooohhhh!”

Bill: “You can kind of get an idea of just how big they really are.

Sadie: “They’re huge!”

Bill: “They weigh anywhere from 18-25 pounds and have close to a 10 foot wingspan.”

In the early 1980s the California Condors almost went the way of the Dodo –
extinct. Only 22 of these birds remained in the wild.

The big birds were killed by hunters. They died from lead poisoning after eating
animals killed with lead bullets. And their own genetic makeup didn’t help much
either.

These birds, shall we say, have a low sex drive. Rather than produce chicks every
year and gamble that they’ll survive, condors lay one egg every other year. That
hasn’t worked so well.

So biologists thought they’d help. They started capturing the endangered condors to
begin a captive breeding program. In 1987, the last wild bird was caught.

Bill Heinrich recalls there was plenty of controversy over that decision.

“People thought well you should let them go extinct with dignity or you can try to
breed them in captivity but you might fail and then you would have lost them in the
wild that much quicker.”

But the move saved the birds from being killed by hunters or from eventual lead
poisoning.

And, the breeding program, well, let’s just say the numbers speak for themselves.
Down to 22 birds in 1987, today there are now 327 California Condors. And more
than half of those birds are back in the wild.

Bill Heinrich says next spring some of these condors will be released some where
around the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

That’s where the birds will once again be exposed to one of the factors that lead to
their decline. It’s not hunters these days. The birds are protected by the Endangered
Species Act. But lead poisoning. Condors feed on gut piles and carcasses left by
hunters. If a hunter uses lead bullets, the bullet will explode sending tiny fragments
of lead through the meat. It’s enough to make a condor sick. Heinrich says lead
poisoning remains the single biggest threat to the birds.

“You know if hadn’t been for the lead issue coming up, I would have thought, I
didn’t have any reservations about it being successful until the lead problem cropped
up.”

Every year, biologists have to test the birds for lead poisoning. They’ve been working
with the Arizona Game and Fish Department to hand out free non-lead bullets to
hunters in the area. Last year, not a single condor died from lead poisoning. This
year, biologists have had to treat six birds, all of which are expected to make a full
recovery.

In California, the state has banned lead ammunition because of the lead poisoning
concern. But hunters don’t think lead bullets are a real problem, and they really
don’t want to pay for different kinds of bullets because that is a lot more expensive.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

Toxic Toys Still on Shelves

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

Millions of toys were recalled
last year because of lead contamination.
There were about half as many recalls this
year, but lead in toys is still a problem.
Rebecca Williams reports there’s a new law
that will limit the amount of lead in any
toy or children’s product, but it won’t go
into effect until after the holidays:

Transcript

Millions of toys were recalled
last year because of lead contamination.
There were about half as many recalls this
year, but lead in toys is still a problem.
Rebecca Williams reports there’s a new law
that will limit the amount of lead in any
toy or children’s product, but it won’t go
into effect until after the holidays:

There is already a federal limit on how much lead can be in the paint on
kids’ toys. But lead can also be in places you might not expect – like plastic
parts of toys.

The new law puts a limit on lead in any part of a toy. But the new law won’t
take effect until February 10th. So that means toys that you can buy now
can legally have very high levels of lead embedded in them.

Mike Shriberg is with the Ecology Center. It’s an environmental group
that’s been testing toys for lead.

(beep)

He has an analyzer that tells you what elements are in a toy – in this case, a
plastic building block.

“So when I look at the results here, this orange block has over 3,000 parts
per million of lead. Now remember this will be illegal to be on the shelves
in February. It’s legal now because the lead’s not in the paint, it’s embedded
in the plastic.”

Babies and little kids’ brains and bodies are still developing. Since they tend
to put toys in their mouths, they’re really vulnerable to damage from lead.

“There is no safe level of lead in blood. Pediatricians have said a little bit of
lead causes a little bit of brain damage and a lot of lead causes a lot of brain
damage. We think toys shouldn’t be involved in causing any amount of
brain damage.”

Mike Shriberg says there is no way to know just by looking which toys have
lead and which ones don’t. But he says children’s jewelry is by far the
worst. They found it’s five times more likely to have lead than other toys.
He says simpler toys, such as unpainted wooden toys, tend to be safer.

“Just to be clear there is no surefire rule.”

Shriberg’s group has tested 1,500 toys this year and has put the results up on
their website: healthy-toys dot org.

The group found about one in every five toys still has lead.

Mattel and Hasbro say they’re carefully testing their toys this year. And
retailers such as Toys R Us and Wal-Mart are also testing toys.

The National Retail Federation did not return calls for comment.

The National Association of Manufacturers did not want to comment for this
story. But in a recent Wall Street Journal article – a spokesperson for the
trade group said billions of dollars in inventory could be lost when the new
lead law goes into effect.

Three billion toys are sold in the US each year. So who’s going to make
sure all those toys comply with the new law? A small government agency.

Julie Vallese is with the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“CPSC always has investigators in the field looking for products in violation
of safety standards. Now it is a big market and we do have limited
resources. But we have a systematic way of going about looking for
violations and we will be doing that come February 10th.”

Last year, the New York Times reported that just one man, named Bob, was
responsible for testing toys for safety.

Agency officials say that’s not true – they say many people test toys. We
asked how many. We asked repeatedly. We wanted to know the exact
number of people who test toys for lead. But they refused to tell us.

Congress has promised more money for more toy testers. But that has not
happened yet.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says besides – industry has the
biggest responsibility here.

The agency says when the new toy law goes into effect in February, it’ll be
up to the manufacturers, the retailers and the importers to make sure the toys
they’re selling are not in violation of the new lead law.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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