Toy Recall
Parents do everything they can to make their children safe ? at least everything they think to do. They cover up the plug sockets so that their children can not get electrocuted, they check on them during the night to make sure that they are alright, they supervise them every moment of the day. Yet one of the most important safety activities a parent can do is something that is often neglected by many of the parents I know: checking for toy recalls.
Ever since the Fisher-Price toy recall, the hazards of potentially dangerous toys have been in the public eye. This, however, is not the first dangerous toy recall, and it will not be the last. A lot of people will remember the Australian toy recall that happened about a year ago. Apparently, some small beads ? the type of thing the kids love to put in their mouths ? had a chemical paint on them that, when metabolized, would turn into the date rape drug GHB. Although no one was killed as a result of this, someone could have been. As it was, several kids got sick And had to be hospitalized.
Lead paint still seems to be the most common source of toy recalls. That was what the Chinese recall was about. A lot of Fisher Price toys were painted with lead paint. If the paint was ingested, kids could develop long-term neurological problems that would affect them for their whole lives. Although the toy recall has had some effect, there are still thousands upon thousands of Fisher-Price toys out there with lead paint. They haven’t been successfully recalled because some parents don’t really keep up on the news well enough.
Personally, I subscribed to several toy recall lists online. These lists give me all the news about recalled toys before it hits the media. Yet for me, even this isn’t enough. You have to do some background research so that you can catch potentially unsafe toys before they are recalled. A lot of my friends have taken to completely boycotting toys made in China. They believe that this step is necessary because consumer safety standards are not up to snuff in that country. I haven’t taken this radical step myself yet, but I have contemplated it. After all, nothing is more important than the safety of my children. I would rather err on the side of caution than have them ingest toxic chemicals from a poorly made toy.
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