Consumer Alert - Contaminated Toys

AFP reports that Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has warned, based on tests that he commissioned, that certain Halloween items contain high levels of lead.

Three of those items -- a Frankenstein cup and two buckets for sweets -- were found to have lead levels up to 650 times above the upper limit for lead in children's items allowed by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Brown said in a statement posted on his website.

The highest level of lead was found in the Frankenstein cup, which the test showed to contain 39,000 parts per million (ppm) of the potentially toxic metal.

A witch bucket contained 21,000 ppm and a skull bucket contained 2,700 ppm, according to the results posted on the senator's website.

The level above which lead poses a danger to children is 600 ppm, according to the CPSC's website.

The CPSC is doing its usual mealy-mouthed waffling on the issue, claiming that they test seasonal items in a timely fashion. Which will be no consolation at all to the parents whose children are poisoned. Children of all ages love to put things in their mouths. It's part of being a child, the desire to touch, taste, smell (and break) everything they can. And lead poisoning is an insidious damager of brains and nervous systems.

I wonder how many of our Ritalin-addled sprog are displaying symptoms of lead poisoning?

Feel free to drop by Senator Brown's Web site at any time and see what he's doing. We need more politicians like him.

Via Raw Story.

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