The bill passed by congress last week limiting lead and phthalates in children’s products is encouraging, but far from a complete solution needed for toy safety.  We are thrilled to see the efforts made by the House and Senate but know that it will be years until the benefits are fully realized.Here’s what we like about the bill:

•  Lead will not be allowed in any part of children’s products unlike the current rule which only affects surface paint.
• The amount of lead allowed in children’s products will be lowered to 100 parts per million.
• Phthalates will be banned for the first time.
• Testing will be mandatory on all toys and children’s products

Weaknesses of the bill:

• It’s going to take a while before the new regulations are enforceable.
• A database will be created with toys that have safety problems, but nothing will be done to showcase the products that truly are safe.

At No Strings Attached Toys, we have been pursuing stricter safety standards since last year when we opened.  From the beginning we have made a strong effort to ensure that the products we sell are lead free by thoroughly researching the manufacturers we do business with and by becoming the first known retailer to test toys for lead in its complete inventory.  We have tested thousands of toys for lead in our store and at other stores, schools and homes.  We began a database at the beginning of the year showing lead testing results alongside toys that have been recalled because of lead content. Today we are announcing our commitment to update that database at http://unleadedtoylist.com with 2500 toy test results by November of this year.  The database will highlight toys that are lead and phthalate free based on tests conducted by us, manufacturers, and other reputable third party sources.  This database will be more useful than the one offered by the federal government that will only list safety issues and violations which will only be added after incidents occur. Our next goal is to see that toys at schools and daycares across the country are tested for lead so that children will no longer be exposed to leaded toys and educational products in the classroom.  Many products that have been developed for schools have been recalled and are likely still in use at schools today.  We would propose that grants should be available to have testing done to further the efforts to eliminate poisonous toys.

After 2 months of testing toys and other household goods for lead, No Strings Attached Toys has finally loaded some preliminary test results on it’s new website (still in BETA): UnleadedToyList.com.  Currently the majority of the nearly 400 initial products on the website are either products for sale at No Strings Attached Toys or products that have been recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.  There are hundreds of results of past tests that still need to be loaded over the next week.

Right now, the selection of test results for many categories is very limited.  During this BETA phase, we encourage users to email requests for additional lead tests for a particular product, brand, or category of products.  We will test products that have been requested before testing random items.  If a product contains no lead, we want you to know about it.  If a product hasn’t been recalled, but contains lead, we want you to know about it. 

We will be conducting numerous product lead tests at major retail chains and will report the results in our lead test database.  If you take a look at the website, please send us your feedback to let us know how we’re doing.

Another backpack at Target tested positive for high lead content.

This High School Musical backpack tested between 3000-4000 ppm lead.  It is added to our list of Unofficial Recalls.

The black part of the wheel on this tricycle by Parents tested at more than 1500 ppm lead.

Because of the high lead content, this tricycle, found at Target, is added to our list of Unofficial Recalls.

The mouth on this Go Diego Go Card Game backpack was several thousand parts per million lead.

This is another product added to our Unofficial Recalls due to high lead content.

While at Target tonight, I noticed a recall notice posted about Curious George plush dolls.

I picked one of the Curious George plush toys up and tested it in the store.  The yellow jacket instantly lit up with more than 10,000 parts per million lead.

This particular model was not included in the recall so I will add it to my Unofficial Recalls.  A yellow jacket with more than 10,000 ppm is ridiculous.

We purchased this Go Diego Go Backpack from Target in November.  When we tested it in the store, we found that virtually every component tested positive for lead.  Even the yellow canvas tested very high for lead content.  For this reason we are adding this to our Unofficial Recalls.

The vinyl material throughout has between 4,000 and 5,000 parts per million lead in it.  Different parts of the canvas material test between 1% and 2% lead (10,000 - 20,000 ppm).  This is far beyond the 600 ppm (.06%) allowable lead content.  Even the black plastic contains more than 1000 ppm lead.  We are requesting that the manufacturer, Global Design Concepts and Target stop selling this product immediately until it can be manufactured without lead.  Since the lead content is part of the material and not part of surface paint it may not technically fail federal safety standards but that certainly doesn’t mean that it should be allowed to remain on the shelves.

Test results are from a portable X-Ray Fluorescence device.

This piggy bank was brought into the store after Christmas to be lead tested as part of our free lead paint testing.  This pig not only tested positive for lead, it was extremely leaded.

It measured more than 1% lead when we tested the pig.  Then today I retested the pig and found that the yellow paint tested in excess of 22,000 ppm lead (2.2%).  Even the black stopper on the bottom was more than 1000 ppm lead.  I couldn’t find a single square inch that passed our lead test.  There is no labeling or other information to help find out where it came from so if you have a pig that looks like this one, don’t chew on it and wash your hands after touching it.  The only safe place for this toy is on top of my wall of shame in the land of misfit toys.  If you want a great piggy bank, try the decorate your own piggy bank that we sell in our store.

Through the course of our free lead testing, we love to see all the toys that have no measurable amounts of lead. But then there are the toys that just surprise us that have ridiculous amounts of lead in them but haven’t been recalled yet.  So this will be the first of our unofficial recalls where we will post toys that fail our tests.

Just today we tested a Radio Flyer Fold 2 Go Tricycle. 

The black wheels tested at several thousand parts per million, far above the safety standard of 600 enforced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.  We were shocked by the results.  While I don’t expect the wheels get chewed on much, it seems really bad for that much lead to be present in the wheels.

We also tested the numbers on a book about calling 9-1-1 in an emergency.

The numbers tested at 1500 ppm, also beyond the federal standards.

We will alert the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the manufacturers, and the retailers that sell these products.  We will also regularly add products that fail lead tests.  More importantly, we will begin a database of toys that successfully pass lead tests.  We hope this database will eventually list every safe toy that exists.  Until then, we will just continue to test every toy brought into our store.

While the news reporters are constantly mentioning the next recalled toy manufactured in China, many have decided that the best way to stay safe is to avoid Chinese made toys.  Certainly with the majority of toys sold in the US coming from China, the majority of the recalls will also originate from China.  The natural assumption is that China is recklessly sending over poor quality and unsafe toys and that the solution is as simple as exclusively buying toys made in the US or other safer countries. 

What we need to remember is that countries don’t make unsafe toys, companies in countries make unsafe toys.  The problem doesn’t lie with China, but with specific companies — many of which are in China.  The recalls are all product and company specific problems resulting from careless design and faulty inspection processes and quality control.  Even Mattel has apologized to the people of China for damaging their reputation.  They acknowledged that they were to blame for their flawed design, not the company who followed their design.  There are many, many toymakers who make high quality toys in China and throughout the world and have very good inspection procedures to ensure safety.

The relative few toys that have been recalled have caused widespread mistrust with products made overseas.  But it’s not just where the label says a toy is made that makes it safe.  Since many toy manufacturers  still use some parts or materials from other countries, you can never generalize that a toy is safe based solely on where it originated as it still may contain unsafe parts from elsewhere. 

No Strings Attached Toys actively seeks toys made in the US to support local companies, but doesn’t use that as proof that toys are safe.  Instead, toys sold in store are first chosen by finding manufacturers that have clean safety records and vigorous testing and inspection practices, regardless of their location of their factories.  When new products are received, they are then tested in store with an XRF Analyzer to be certain that the toys on the shelf exceed government safety standards.  Shopping at a responsible toy store for toys that have passed lead tests is a far safer method to shop than blindly trusting location labels. 

The blame for lead recalls lies entirely on those who fail to inspect toys thoroughly.  China is not to blame any more than the US is to blame for allowing the tainted products into the marketplace here.