Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Safety chief urges toymakers to get the lead out

In an article by Karey Wutkowski at http://www.reuters.com/article/Regulation08/idUSN0725654020080219, the top U.S. product safety regulator on Tuesday, February 19, 2008, urged manufacturers to remove lead from children's products before congressional action would essentially ban lead from toys. Congress is expected to vote to increase funding for the CPSC and cut the amount of allowable lead content in toys. Nancy Nord of the CPSC suggested that the time for testing lead tolerances should be over.

While excessive levels of lead dominated the news before Christmas and accounted for 42 of the 81 recalls issued by the CPSC in 2007, less than 20% of the 27 million toys recalled last year were due to lead. Magnets, burn issues, and lacerations accounted for the other 21 million toys. Again in 2008, lead accounts for less than 20% of the 300,000 toys recalled so far.

As a mother, I applaud the efforts to remove lead from my children's toys (I thought that happened a long time ago), though Congress does still need to increase funding for the CPSC to help oversee all the other manufacturing problems.

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