WASHINGTON, Nov. 20, 2007
Feds Urge Vigilance When Toy Shopping
Consumer Product Safety Commission Tells Parents To Stay Informed Of Recalls And Hazards
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Play CBS Video Video What Toys Are Safe? Hannah Storm speaks with Julie Vallese from the Consumer Product Safety Commission about which products are actually safe in the midst of toy recalls that have placed many parents on alert.
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Video Lead Paint Taints Popular Toys Safety is on the minds of parents this holiday season as they shop for popular toys. Are retailers and manufacturers doing enough to safeguard children? Sandra Hughes reports.
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Toys identified as hazardous are displayed at World Against Toys Causing Harm press conference in Boston, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2007. (AP Photo/Bizuayehu Tesfaye)
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Interactive Toyland 2008 Top toys, government recalls, plus tips to play it safe well beyond the holidays.
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Photo Essay Holiday Hoopla Celebrations and decorations across the country and around the globe.
Consumer groups countered that they had found numerous cases where toys that posed choking hazards or the danger of lead poisoning had made it improperly onto store shelves. "Consumers looking for toys still face an industry full of safety loopholes," said the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Consumer activists in California went shopping just last week and found nine toys, including the popular Dora the Explorer and Sponge Bob items, had very high levels of lead, some with 24 times the level of lead acceptable in paint, reports CBS News correspondent Sandra Hughes.
Three days before the start of the busy shopping season, Nancy Nord, acting chief of the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, issued safety tips in a two-page release that urged parents to "stay informed" about safety risks by reading product warning labels and signing up for direct e-mail notification of recalls at www.cpsc.gov.
Among the biggest toy hazards the commission cited:
The agency noted that the Chinese government recently agreed to help prevent lead-painted toys from reaching the United States, and the CPSC was "taking the action needed to remove violative products from the marketplace."
Consumer groups were not so sure.
In its 57-page annual survey, U.S. PIRG agreed that toys with small magnets as well as small parts that pose choking hazards create significant risks.
Between 1990 and 2005, at least 166 children choked on children's products, accounting for more than half of all toy-related deaths at a rate of about 10 deaths per year, the group said. Several times this year potentially dangerous toys were sold without the required warning labels of possible choking risks while the CPSC also has been slow to issue public warnings, U.S. PIRG said.
"We want parents to really focus on where is the risk for their child. And we do know that it's choking, inhaling small parts, that children do go on riding toys and get hit by cars," CPSC spokesperson Julie Vallese told CBS' The Early Show.
U.S. PIRG and the Center for Environmental Health, based in California, also pointed to continuing risks involving lead-tainted toys, millions of which were recalled this year. They cited weak laws that clearly ban lead only in paint.
"We want parents to understand that earlier this year when we realized that there was a violation of lead paint in the system, we did a top-to-bottom real inspection of the toys on the shelves," Vallese told The Early Show.
"And the toys that are on the shelves this year have been more heavily investigated and scrutinized than any year in the past."
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Add a Comment See all 21 Comments
- This whole episode is sad. People shouldn''t have to be vigilant.
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- That''s very helpful advice and very timely too.
The fed is always one step behind the curve.
Like grounding all the planes AFTER the 911 attack.
Why didn''t they stop the attack in the first place?
LOL. - Reply to this comment
- Whatever...everything is dangerous. Please don''t give your kids spoons or forks. They might kill themselves! They tell us that the cows, pigs, and chickens are being fed each others sh*t and know no toys!
Play with rocks like we used to. You can kill someone with that too. - Reply to this comment
- TOY SHOPPING??? Who the h*ll has money to buy toys, when the cost of food, gas, home utilities, etc has sky rocketed. But not the pay check.
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We will prevail in the War on Toys.- Reply to this comment
- Fed: "Consumers should be vigilant this shopping reason. Make sure to bring along your test kit for hazardous chemicals, and to test every item before you buy it. Because we sure as h*ll won''t be doing our job."
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- If the feds are worried, why wasn''''t the Consumer product safety commission watching this before it happened. Isn''''t that thier function? Is this just another lame, expensive govt bureacracy that accomplishes nothing?
Posted by CultureChang at 04:55 PM : Nov 20, 2007
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Bush gutted their budget for the fourth year in a row, and they are working with less money and less personnel than they have in many years. - Reply to this comment
- If the feds are worried, why wasn''t the Consumer product safety commission watching this before it happened. Isn''t that thier function? Is this just another lame, expensive govt bureacracy that accomplishes nothing?
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- Fed also predicts more will be out of work next year. Shy not just buy and swallow as many imported *** as possible? Why is China continually rewarded for continually making toxic products, and given lucrative deals by the very industries that claim to hate piracy?
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- It would be a easier if companies produce safe stuff rather than parents coming into the stores with lead detectors, lead test kits, swabs, sniffing every toy shelves
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- No projectile toys or riding toys? In other words, no FUN!
I noticed the government didn''t mention horses or pitbulls or stray cats. Aren''t they toys that are a danger to society? - Reply to this comment
- The absolute epitome of arrogance.
The CPSC has shirked their responsibility and now urges consumers to vigilance.
Can you say malfeasance? - Reply to this comment
- Now, we know the rest of the story. The un-regulated invisible hand of capitalism can kill and has. Why do we pay these regulators in the Bush/Cheney mis-administration of anything goes. Now the consumer will probably have to buy testing kits to determine if a product is safe. I wonder if any of those brown shirts that have left through the revolving door are working for those companies that are making dangerous products?? Maybe they have opened start-up companies for kits to test products???? un-regulated capitalism=Fascist Capitalism.
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- I thought part of why we paid TAXES was to have a government that protected the people through inspections and regulations. Great what 7 years of repug rule have done to this country.
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- "We want parents to understand that earlier this year when we realized that there was a violation of lead paint in the system, we did a top-to-bottom real inspection of the toys on the shelves," Vallese told The Early Show.
Check!! This is the Corporate Bimbo Bush hired to protect you and our kids from toys. She''s the one who''s been taking kick back''s like trips, fully paid, and a lot of other goodies... She''s also the one who turned down additional funding for an agency that can''t even test a small fraction of what we get on our shelves. She needs to go to JAIL along with her boss!! Sieg Heil Bush. - Reply to this comment
- Not buying toys made in China is one option but a lot of blame must also go to the lax quality controls that the our manufacturers and retailers have exhibited in the name of boosting their bottom lines
http://littledividends.blogspot.com/2007/11/safety-concerns-and-toy-recalls-who-is.html - Reply to this comment
- Not buying toys made in China is one option but a lot of blame must also go to the lax quality controls that the our manufacturers and retailers have exhibited in the name of boosting their bottom lines
http://littledividends.blogspot.com/2007/11/safety-concerns-and-toy-recalls-who-is.html - Reply to this comment
- Buy books. If they''re made in America.
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- All of this could be avoided if we JUST STOP BUYING *** FROM CHINA. End of discussion.
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- Send a vigilant message by not buying any toys this year.
- Reply to this comment
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