Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game

Green group tests toys for toxins, publishes results online

Posted at 2:34 PM on 05 Dec 2007

You may remember that a child's plaything or two has been recalled for high lead levels recently -- and by a plaything or two, we mean millions. So it's a tad troubling that in testing 1,268 toys, the Michigan-based Ecology Center found that 35 percent contained lead, mercury, cadmium, and/or arsenic -- and only 23 of the toxic toys had been recalled. Seventeen percent of the tested toys exceeded the federal recall standard for lead, including a Hannah Montana card-game case with five times the safe lead level. "Plenty of toys don't have these chemicals in them," says the Ecology Center's Tracey Easthope. "This is a problem we can solve and it's a problem we should not have. It's something parents should not have to worry about." Perturbed parents can check out the Ecology Center's full searchable results of the testing at HealthyToys.org.

sources: The Detroit News, Hartford Courant, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, The Washington Post

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Comments: (1 comment)

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Good toys...

My favorite toys when I was a little kid were the wheelbarrow, the hammer, rope/twine, and the spade shovel. I guess I like hatchets, knives, and matches when I could get my hands on them as well. Anyways, give a kid a shovel and a place to dig in the back yard...hours of fun! With a wheel barrow and a hammer, you can fill up on cool-looking rocks at the old stone pile by the edge of the potato field and spend hours breaking them open with the hammer, although sometimes it's easier to just throw them against other rocks. Oh...and the bucket is a great toy as well. You can fill it with clay from the stream and then make little pots and dry them in the sun...or just smear the clay all over your body. Needless to say, with a little twine or an old hay rope, one can make a pretty good bow and arrow set.

Stop shopping in toy stores and toy aisles. If you want to enrich childhood, show your kid the garden shed.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

by John former Marine at 6:31 AM on 06 Dec 2007

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