Over the last year many of the toy safety reports have been concerned about lead, choking hazards and fire/burn hazards.
Now, an Environmental group says many items for sale have high levels of lead, arsenic and other chemicals.
In a report that was released yesterday, the group find that one in three toys tested was found to contain toxic chemicals such as lead, flame retardants and arsenic.
Researchers for the Michigan-based Ecology Center tested more than 1,500 popular toys for lead, cadmium, arsenic, PVC and other harmful chemicals. They said they found that one-third of the toys contain “medium” or “high” levels of chemicals of concern.
Also according to the study, children’s jewelry is 5 times more likely to contain lead above the toxic 600 ppm-level than other toys. In particular, the report mentioned that several Hannah Montana brand jewelry items tested high for lead.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children’s toys have less than 40 parts-per-million of lead. The levels of lead detected in “many” of the toys was “significantly” above those guidelines, according to the release.
Here are some things they found:
- 21% of toys from China and 16% of toys from all other countries had detectable levels of lead.
- Of the 17 toys made in the United States that were tested, 35% had detectable levels of lead. A U.S.-made Halloween pumpkin pin had 190,943 ppm of lead.
- 62% of the tested products – or 954 items – contain low levels of chemical concern.
- 21% of the products tested – or 324 items – contained no toxic chemicals to be worried about.
To see how the toys were rated please visit www.healthytoys.org
Some of the companies that do well are many that we have covered on this site.
Plan Toys, Melissa and Doug, Alex Toys, iPlay, Haba, Lego, Corolle and Baby K’tan are listed as some of the best.
