If a company that markets to children, Disney for example, licenses its name to a toy manufacturer, (like F.A.F.), and the toy maker makes the toy in China, using lead or arsenic or melamine or bromine, should that company be held liable for the toxic effects on children?

I’m disturbed at the flagrant disregard of our children’s health by big business in favor of increasing revenue through any means necessary.

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Let me explain.

I read about toxins in 1 out of 3 toys yesterday. So I went to HealthyToys.org to look a little closer at the findings of their toxic toy rankings. At the top of the list of examples of Worst Toys was a Hannah Montana necklace.

Made in (no surprise) China.

The toxin? Lead.

406,510 parts per million (ppm) of lead.

Is my math fuzzy, or doesn’t 400,000 ppm also mean 40%?

400,000 ppm is way over the toy industry’s voluntary standard of 90 ppm, and the U.S. regulations of 600 ppm for lead in toys.

Although no amount of lead is safe for children, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended a maximum of 40 ppm of lead in children’s products. – Healthy Toys

Since jewelry is usually worn next to the skin, does this mean that recipients of this Christmas gift also get a bonus of lead poisoning? Or does that bonus come later, when a kid or pet swallows it?

The survey by Healthy Toys found that one-third of the toys recently tested were found to contain medium to high levels of lead, arsenic, mercury, bromine, or cadmium. Only 21% of the toys they tested contained no harmful chemicals, but 20% had lead in them, some in excess of our federal recall standards for lead paint.

View the worst toy rankings at HealthyToys.org and make sure to inspect any gift your child gets for Christmas this year.

Part of the capitalist beauty of the corporation is that the shareholders basically have no liability or accountability for the end products of their ventures.

Their profit comes at the expense of our children’s lives…

How can we make these companies accountable for the products that have their names on them?

Image: dawnzy58 at Flickr under Creative Commons License