How to Avoid Unsafe Toys
Safety advocates say parents need to be vigilant about how kids play with toys.
Aug. 14, 2007 — -- When Rachel Weintraub, a young mother, found out that her 3-year-old son's wooden Thomas the train toy had been pulled off the shelves due to harmful amounts of lead paint, she was concerned.
"I was really worried," she said. "I wiped things down but I was also curious whether lead dust got on to other things." So she took a device that tests for the presence of lead and examined other objects in the house. Thankfully for her and her son and 1-year-old daughter, nothing came up positive.
Weintraub, the director of product safety at the Consumer Federation of America, has plenty of expertise in how to prevent her children from being injured by dangerous toys.
What about the hundreds of thousands of parents who also bought Thomas trains for their kids? Or who purchased Fisher-Price's Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters, which were recalled last week because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead?
Tuesday Mattel announced the recall of more than 9 million toys, including 1.5 million toy cars, because of lead paint. The Sarge Die Cast toys from the Pixar "Cars" movie assortments were sold individually and in assortment packs throughout the United States.
This is Mattel's second recall involving lead paint in two weeks.
In the wake of recent safety recalls involving toys made in China, how are parents supposed to protect their children?
Most safety advocates say that avoiding toys made in China is not the answer.
First of all, more than 80 percent of toys sold in America are made in China, so it's almost impossible to avoid them. Secondly, "some have parts that are made there," said Weintraub. "With our global economy, when it says 'Made in the U.S.A.,' it probably means it's assembled in the U.S., not that every component was made here."
One parent tried avoiding products made in China for an entire year. Sara Bongiorni catalogued her family's difficulties and frustrations in her new book "A Year Without 'Made in China,'" concluding, "You can still live without it, but it's getting trickier and costlier by the day."
Prescott Carlson, the co-founder of the Imperfect Parents Web site, which includes a recall tracking section, said he has started avoiding Chinese-made toys when he shops for his 4-year-old and 9-year-old children. "It's difficult given their prevalence but there are some German-made toys of better quality or we go to Ikea, though even some of those might have parts made in China."
Related Stories
ABC News Live