Toys and where they come from

Hi,
A friend of mine shared that she never buys toys from china due to the lead content. As my boys were playing with these cheap little rings, I noticed they are from china, as is most of their toys.

How worried do I need to be about lead poisining? I'm trying not to freak out. We bought these from walmart. And the boys just love them!

Can anyone give me guidelines?

 

:blush: I never really put too much thought into it. ardon: I have a friend that is the same as yours, but I just never put that much thought into it.

 

I'm like Liz, I never put much thought into it myself. :blush: I think a good majority of kids toys come from China, or so it seems to me. I believe you can sign up for recall notifications on BRU & TRU website (I could be wrong about that though).

 

I don't put much thought into it either. ardon:

 

Me either. I check the recall site about once a week (when I remember) but that's about it. When the boys were born, Baby Einstein recalled one of their blocks that came in a set of four. I removed the block from their toy box (they hadn't played with it yet as they were too little) but I never sent it back. Life just got too crazy to panic about "what ifs". The BPA scare was going on the last 3 months the boys were bottle feeding. I didn't replace their bottles.

 

I haven't had my twins yet, but I wrote a pretty hefty paper on Outsourcing to China (one of the main points of the paper was the lead poisoning and it's affect on our children). I wrote that paper wow, nearly 2 years ago. The US has have placed much stricter guidelines since then and very few products with lead paint get through anymore. If they do, they are typically caught and put on recall. Most major retailers (such as Wal-mart) no longer purchase from certain areas or companies in China due to the big hassle we went through a couple years ago w/ so many defective/lead paint products.

 

your biggest concern is going to be with anything that has a painted surface where the paint could flake off. it's the potential of ingestion of flakes that make lead content most risky.

some websites for you:

http://www.healthytoys.org/
http://safemama.com/

you can search for specific on healthytoys.com although the list isn't comprehensive. still, i've found it to be a reasonable guide for the items i'm interested in. if you're really concerned you can certainly make a best effort to avoid products that are high risk, but it will take some investment of time and effort. and, of course, it typically means avoiding some of the cheap and easy toy options. like, make it your policy not to buy toys from dollar stores, for example.

 

you guys are the best!! I sooooo needed to hear this. We do avoid the cheaper stores for toys, just because. But I feel much better knowing I'm not endangering my kids. My philosophy has typically been the 80/20 rule, I feel that I do the best I can with the kids, but realize I need to let some things go (which is hard for my obsessive nature )
We still have 6 bpa dr. brown bottles we haven't gotten rid of, we don't put them in the micro or dishwasher, and hoping that's enough...there is way too much out there to be scared of, I'm glad I have a place like this to help me put things in prespective!
Thanks again!!!
reb

 

I don't worry about it. ardon:

 

I don't worry about it either. :umm:

 

Overall, I don't worry too much about their toys, but my MIL sent some spoons to the girls from the dollar store that were made in China and those went right in the trash. (of course I thanked her for the nice thought)

 

funny you should say that. i found some spoons at a dollar store when i was desperate to find a spoon shape the boys wouldn't refuse. i brought them home and did a little research and investigated the company that distributes the product. i found a site that listed all of the materials certification and verified that these spoons had been tested to meet US standards for materials safety.

so i guess i should amend that statement to say the dollar store may be okay, but definitely do the legwork and only keep the things that can be verified.

 

A new law called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act has been enacted that limit the content of lead and other substances in products, especially children's toys.

I don't know all the details, but I believe it's only new toys, and it's already taken effect. So anything you buy new has to have been tested for lead, phthalates, etc. and there are pretty harsh penalties for not testing and/or selling products with elevated levels of these substances.

Here's a wiki article about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Product_Safety_Improvement_Act

And here's the government website about it:

http://www.cpsc.gov/ABOUT/Cpsia/cpsia.HTML

I feel pretty good about new products, but I wonder about some of the plastic toys that my in-laws bought them when they were born. EVERYTHING goes into these boys' mouths!