Zhu Zhu Pets Declared Safe Following Report of Chemical Dangers
CPSC investigates after consumer group claims chemical dangers in popular toy.
Dec. 7, 2009— -- There will be no recall for the popular Zhu Zhu Pets Hamsters following a contested report that the toys contained "dangerous" levels of potentially harmful metals, an official for the Consumer Product Safety Commission told ABC News today.
The official said the CPSC had determined that the toys meet all federal standards for heavy metals and that the agency considered them "safe."
The CSPC comment comes hours after the consumer group that originally reported the toys' hazards, GoodGuide, issued a "correction" in a press release and clarified that its testing method differed from that of the industry standard.
"While we accurately reported the chemical levels in toys that we measured using our testing method, we should not have compared our results to federal standards," the statement said. "We regret this error."
The CSPC began investigating the life-like toy hamsters after GoodGuide posted on its Web site that one of the hamster types, Mr. Squiggles, contained a potentially dangerous amounts of antimony. The claim was staunchly refuted by Zhu Zhu Pets producer Cepia Corp.
"We are disputing the findings of GoodGuide and we are 100 percent confident that Mr. Squiggles, and all other Zhu Zhu Toys, are safe and compliant with all U.S. and European standards for consumer health and safety in toys," Russ Hornsby, CEO of Cepia LLC, said in a statement posted on the Zhu Zhu Pets Web site.
Hornsby told ABC News that Ceplia's products "are in compliance with all government and industry safety standards. They do not contain high levels of antimony in any way."
Click here to read Cepia's full statement.
For their test GoodGuide used an X-ray fluorescence test that tells exactly how much heavy metal is in the product, Charles Margulis of the Center for Environmental Health told "Good Morning America," but it does not tell whether the metals pose any danger and might actually get out of the toy.
Cepia uses a leach test -- the industry standard -- that examines how much of the chemical will come off in lab testing.
Dana O'Rourke, GoodGuide CEO, wrote in a blog post that "while GoodGuide considers the presence of any antimony on the surface of a toy to be a concern, we want to clarify that we used a testing methodology to evaluate the toys that is different from the testing methodology incorporated into the federal standards."
CLICK HERE for more information on other potentially harmful toys.
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