Report: Many toys still contain banned chemicals, lead

Posted on Nov 25, 2009 by admin.

Despite a new law that bans six chemicals from children’s products and lowers the amount of lead allowed, a public interest group has found a number of toys at major retailers that contain the outlawed chemicals and illegal amounts of lead.

In a report released Tuesday, “Trouble in Toyland,” U.S. PIRG found that although many manufacturers and retailers are complying with the new law, a handful are not, and it is difficult for consumers to distinguish between the two.

This is the first U.S. PIRG report since sweeping changes to consumer safety laws in 2008 in response to thousands of imported toys from China that contained dangerously high levels of lead and growing concerns about phthalates found in plastic toys.

The group sent 15 children’s products to an independent laboratory to test for lead or phthalates. Four were found to have excessive lead levels; two contained phthalates. For example, a children’s jewelry charm by Claire’s Boutiques was 71 percent lead by weight, when the legal limit is 0.03 percent.

Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman Inez Tenenbaum, who took the post in June, has previously said the law means consumers can have more confidence in toy safety this year. Toy recalls, she said, have dropped from 162 last year to 38 so far this year. Recalls because of lead dropped from 85 last year to 15 this year, she said.

Still, shoppers have no way of telling whether the products on store shelves comply with the law, said Elizabeth Hitchcock, public health advocate at U.S. PIRG, which will offer interactive toy safety tips that shoppers can access by cell phone at www.uspirg.org/issues/toy-safety? id4=NR