Study finds chemicals in popular kids toys

The Ecology Center asks parents to demand nontoxic alternatives.

Star Tribune

MINNEAPOLIS — Holiday toy shopping stress is sure to ratchet up with a new report on toxic toys issued Wednesday.

Nearly one-third of the popular toys tested contain medium to high levels of lead, cadmium, mercury or other potentially dangerous chemicals, according to the Michigan-based Ecology Center. Toy jewelry figures prominently in the “Worst Toys List.”

Toxic toys have particular meaning in Minnesota. Two years ago a 4-year-old Minneapolis boy died after swallowing a heart-shaped charm made almost entirely of lead. His death, followed by recalls of millions of toys in 2007, many of them containing lead and imported from China, prompted Congress to pass toy safety legislation as part of the Consumer Protection Product Safety Improvement Act last summer. It bans all but trace levels of lead and some plastic ingredients in toys and other child products. Many provisions of the new law don’t begin to take effect until 2009.

Toy industry officials said that consumers have every reason to trust the safety of the 3 billion toys sold in America each year, and that industry has led the way in assuring that toys from China and elsewhere meet U.S. standards.

For Eleanor Falk, stricter laws are long overdue. Manufacturers rather than environmental groups should be testing toys, reporting the results and changing to other ingredients, she said. “As a mother of three boys, I’m so busy that the last thing I should have to think about are what chemicals are in my toys,” Falk said. “I just don’t want them in there.”

None of her sons, ages 2, 4 and 7 have been sickened by toys, she said, but about a dozen toys showed up later on recall lists. She threw them out.

The new report is the second year that the Ecology Center’s Healthy Toys project has tested toys and posted results online (www.healthytoys.org) as a guide for parents and others. Of 1,500 toys analyzed in 2008, it found 21 percent with no chemicals of concern, 41 percent with low levels, 29 percent with medium levels and 9 percent with high concentrations. The substances included lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, bromine, and chlorine.

Jeff Gearhart, research director for the project, said that the purpose of the testing was to determine which potentially hazardous chemicals are in toys, not whether toy users are directly exposed to those substances. There are no estimates of health risks, he said. That would require more expensive and time-consuming tests to determine how the chemicals “leach” out of each product under certain play conditions.

Rather, the report offers a less ambitious goal by using a portable X-/Ray Fluorescence analyzer to identify the elemental composition of materials on or near the surface of products, Gearhart said. “There’s no list of ingredients that comes with toys, so our effort is a first step to do that for consumers, and to help them make better purchases,” he said.

The center calls on parents to demand nontoxic alternatives.

Lead remains widespread in toys, said Gearhart, including those manufactured in the U.S. Lead is a powerful neurotoxin that can delay development, lower IQ and in rare cases lead to death. It was detected in 20 percent of the toys tested this year, which included action figures, art materials, building sets, crib toys, dolls, games, jewelry, rattles and teethers, stuffed toys, trains and other products. About 80 percent of the 3 billion toys sold in the U.S. each year come from China, Gearhart said, but lead and other chemicals were also detected in toys made in the United States and elsewhere.