Oct. 29, 2007
Urgent Call For Recall Of Halloween Toys
Professor Tips Off Feds To What He Says Are High Lead Levels
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Play CBS Video Video Halloween Lead Scare Parents and children are warned about lead paint levels said to be found in Halloween costumes and accessories. Hari Sreenivasan reports.
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Special Report Fright Site Spine-tingling stories for the brave at heart. Click here, if you dare.
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Section Susan Koeppen The Early Show's consumer correspondent shares her expertise.
Now, says Sreenivasan, Weidenhammer and his team have found what they say are dangerous amounts of lead in some toys meant for kids to use on Halloween -- and they hope the CPSC issues speedy recalls before the holiday on Wednesday.
One toy in focus is called "ugly teeth." Besides being ugly, the fake plastic teeth have what the researchers say is 100 times the allowable levels of lead in the paint.
The teeth are just one of dozens of Halloween toys Weidenhammer and his team tested.
They say they also found high lead levels in some Halloween baskets, but they say the plastic teeth are of greatest concern because lead enters the system fastest when ingested.
On Thursday, the CPSC issued a recall of Halloween pails that children might use to carry their treats in, based partly on tests the professor and his lab had done.
They say they also found high levels in a Frankenstein cup and white skull bucket, but never received an explanation about why those two items weren't recalled.
In a statement to CBS News, the CPSC would only say it "welcomes information from a variety of sources that may assist us in our investigation."
Acting CPSC Chairman Nancy Nord recently complained to Congress about the agency's lack of resources, and confirmed that the commission only has one person who tests toys.
It usually takes the CPSC a few days to run its own tests or investigate complaints but, Sreenivasan says, considering how the toys Weidenhammer is worried about could be in the hands and mouths of children Wednesday, Weidenhammer hopes his warning becomes the CPSC's top priority.
Sreenivasan filed a blog entry about Weidenhammer:
Jeffrey Weidenhammer comes across as a mild-mannered, matter-of-fact chemistry professor from Ashland University in Ohio, but get him started on the amount of lead in products on store shelves today, and you'll begin to hear a combination of the urgency, disappointment and frustration in his measured voice.
On top of the courses he teaches, he has been cajoling grad students and volunteers to come in on Saturdays and help him test for high levels of lead in the trinkets, metal jewelry and plastic toys that he finds all too readily available in the cheapest discount stores around him.
His sadness flows from the fact that his ad-hoc group is perhaps able to spend more time testing all these products than the Consumer Products Safety Commission -- an agency which has been complaining to Congress about its antiquated facilities, limited resources, low levels of staffing and inability to nab every dangerous product landing on U.S. shores.
The past few months have shined a harsh light on products from China and the amount of lead in the paint covering toys, paint that could slowly be ingested by the children playing with them and that could eventually lead to serious health problems or, in rare cases, death. Wiedenhammer and his team haven't chosen to focus on products from China, but most of the products available at the stores that sell the cheapest goods ("dollar stores," etc.) are from there. He has been looking at products that would most likely find their way into the hands and mouths of children.
Wiedenhammer's disappointment and frustration spring from what he says is the lack of "any explanation" for why some of his research is acknowledged with a recall and some is not. For example, a few weeks ago, he sent in a complaint with detailed lab results on a three different Halloween products: a witch pail, a skull bucket, and a Frankenstein cup. All had high levels of lead in the paint, but only the witch pail was recalled.
Now, two days before Halloween, he has filed another complaint with the CPSC, and this time his focus has been the test results of three products after looking at almost three dozen different Halloween-themed toys. The ugly teeth -- fake plastic fangs children may place in their mouths -- are his greatest concern, because lead is ingested through the mouth much more quickly than through the skin. He also identifies two different types of Halloween baskets that have lead levels far higher than allowable.
Perhaps this is inevitabile when you combine a bureaucracy that says it is overwhelmed in regulating the safety of all imports, a consumer who is addicted to falling prices at seemingly all costs, and a public that votes with its dollars and ballots to maintain the status quo.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 33 CommentsPLEASE STOP BUYING PRODUCTS MADE FROM CHINA! IF WE ALL BAN TOGETHER WE WILL MAKE A STATEMENT TO THESE COMPANIES CONTRIBUTING TO HARMING OUR CHILDREN!
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Posted by tutkill at 11:15 AM : Oct 29, 2007
Geez..just throw the cup away. Do your kids show any signs of lead poisoning? Did you look up the symptoms of lead poisoning? If they have the symptoms insist on the test...if not, don''t put them thru needless tests.
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Posted by tutkill at 11:15 AM : Oct 29, 2007
I would go to anouther doctor if yours won''t test your kids. Who cares if the item is on a recall list or not. You have a concern for your childrens safty that should be all that matters.
It no longer matters whether anything says "Made in the USA". The ingrients or parts that make up something may not come from the USA. They can bring in the parts from China or wherever and as long as it is "assembled" in the U.S. they can say "Made in the U.S."
Whatever happened the "land of the free and the home of the brave"? Now it is the land of imports,less jobs, lower quality and home of the cowardly.
The reason our countries get stuff from China is because WE want everything for CHEAP. We pay them very little and so therefore they have to MAKE EVERYTHING CHEAP. So basically this is all our fault, because we are too CHEAP!!
Okay, I think I am finished my rant now.:) Well, I could go on,but I won''t.
Oh and on WFive, they sent people over to see the plants and stuff where our food comes from and they had cameras. They showed them getting fish out of this thing that was full of water and it had frothy foam with brown sludge in the water. Then the camera moved over to the land and you could see someone spraying their crops with pesticides. Also where they made noodles and hung them out, they said that when you looked down you could see sewage coming out of a pipe onto to ground.
It will be hard to stop our countries from bringing in stuff from China. The first thing to do is to get a law passed that ALL ingredients be listed on food and what country it comes from.
They were saying that the fish has malachite?? green in them, which is cancer causing. The ones they showed were the frozen shrimp, prawns etc. that were in boxes. This stuff is banned in Canada and China knows this. The authorities here say they pull something out of every unit and test it, but obviously that isn''t working too well.
Also they phoned General Mills (cereal) and Kelloggs. What they found out is of course that even though they say PRODUCT OF CANADA OR U.S., some ingredients do probably come from China. General Mills couldn''t tell them where the ingredients come from. I think Kelloggs said that they had ingredients from China but were going to be stating which ones were.
The point is that we need to consider EVERYTHING has ingredients from China.
If you just bought the cup, take it back. If it is old, throw it out. Then take your kid to be tested.
Obviously they have been doing it for a number of years, otherwise we would have stopped all things made in China from entering the country. The fact that one day they recall a particular thing, and then a week later another, is PATHETIC. People are already braindead, they should be recalling EVERYTHING.
It''s not bad enough that we have to check the Ingerdients & Nutrition Facts of the things we eat to prevent Self Poisioning, if we''re smart we need to check the Country Of Origan of everything we buy now! I shop @ two of the biggest culprets of my outrages, Walmart & Sams. Our home improvement outlets are falling to the lower standards as well. Does anybody have knowledge of alternatives for the above with MADE IN AMERICA products & equal prices? If you do it''s probably a regional chain of stores that will fall pray to the buy outs our government has allowed foreign investors to make in our countries assets & resources, including our sea, land & air ports. It''s no wonder our All Mighty Dollar isn''t so All Mighty any more!! I mentioned political agendas before & I''d like to slip these issues of buying back our country, the manufacturing of the pruducts we use on our own soil & brining back the Buy American philosphy as topics also. Chew on that all of you peolple who live with the blinders on & are out there without a clue!!
China! I agree with several other readers, that this should be, in some way, shape or form a polital agenda item & the sollution should be to bring the manufacturing & assembly of products we use the most of back home to the GOOD OL US OF A!!!
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