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Lead levels lead to recalls |
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Thursday, 04 October 2007 |
By KRISTIN REICHARDT
Staff Writer
A recent study to trace lead levels in toys and other Halloween items on shelves this spooky season highlights the need to tighten import laws and increase inspection in federal regulatory agencies, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, says.
“For the last 40 years — since World War II, really — we have built a safety net, a regulatory system, that’s made our food safe, our drinking water safe,” Brown told the Wapakoneta Daily News Wednesday. “We have consumer protection laws and food safety laws.
“The president has cut back on the number of inspectors (in regulatory agencies) and weakened the laws,” he said.
Brown said he read of a study conducted by Jeff Weidenhamer, chair of Ashland University’s chemistry department, and his students, in the New York Times, where Weidenhamer asked students to purchase toys from an Ashland toy store and test the paint’s lead levels.
Reading about Weidenhamer and his students’ results, coupled with numerous recalls of tainted imports from China and other countries in recent months and the estimated $300 billion the United States is expected to import in Chinese goods this year prompted Brown to ask Weidenhamer to perform similar test on Halloween products for sale this year.
Three tested products — approximately one in seven, or 14 percent— were found to contain high lead levels.
A Frankenstein cup contained 39,000 parts per million (ppm), a witch candy bucket contained 21,000 ppm, and a skull candy bucket contained 2,700 ppm — the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) set .600 ppm as the acceptable lead level.
“It should be zero,” Brown said of the approximately 14 percent of items that tested higher than the CPSC-set maximum level. “This is not a job (Weidenhamer) should be doing.
“This is a job the Consumer Product Safety Commission should be doing,” he said.
In response to the results, Brown sent a letter Tuesday to the CPSC, urging quick action on this matter.
“China makes nearly 80 percent of the toys that are imported into the United States, yet adequate safety measures have not been taken to assure that toys produced in China do not contain lead paint,” Brown said in his letter to CPSC Chair Nancy Nord. “The government has the responsibility to ensure that products imported into our country are safe for our children.”
This is a responsibility which the government is not upholding, such as the Bush administration cutting back on import inspectors in the past five years, Brown said.
Import laws also tend to facilitate, not stop, dangerous and faulty products, he said, because more companies are outsourcing to other countries with more lax safety standards.
“Our trade laws really encourage American companies to go oversees,” Brown said. “This leads to a weaker, more dangerous product.”
Brown and other officials recently introduced legislation to address import safety, such as legislation the senator introduced last week to make country-of-origin labeling mandatory for processed foods.
In September, Brown introduced the Food and Product Responsibility Act of 2007 with Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., which would require U.S. Customs and Border Protection to develop a program to ensure distributors are able to cover the costs associated with product recalls and all personal and property damages. This legislation would also grant the Secretary of Agriculture the authority to require recalls of meat, poultry and egg products, and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to require recalls for fruits, vegetables and other products it regulates.
Responsibility also falls to individual companies. Individual companies need to be responsible for checking and ensuring the safety of the product it manufactures and imports, the senator said.
“The companies that are importing are importing products that are not safe,” Brown said. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 05 October 2007 )
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