The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is charged with testing the toys that our children play with every day, has only ONE toy tester on staff. I was outraged to hear this, and, by your comments on my last post and the other posts in the blogosphere today, many of you are too. What can we do to fix this? Here’s a five-minute solution: write, email, or call your congressional representative and ask him or her to increase the funding for the CPSC and/or specifically to direct the CPSC to “add additional staff to test our children’s toys for lead paint, small parts, and other dangers.”
Only have one minute? Go to Consumer Union at http://cu.convio.net/FixTheCPSC, fill in your contact information, add a sentence or two to the beginning of their prewritten letter, and click to send it to your congressperson. You don’t even have to know who your representative is or his contact information — it’s all done automatically (by your zip code).
Take action today. For our kids. Because it’s easier than prying Thomas, Dora, and Elmo out of our kids’ hands later.
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thank you so much for the link. ’cause really? this is silly.
or it would be if global capitalism weren’t a rampaging rhinocerous afraid to lose profits, so far as i understand it all…
Thank you for the link. I’m going to share with my mommy board.
You superb activist, you, repairing the world.
we just had a huge scare in Australia ‘Bindies beads’ containing a glue that is liquid GBH, a party drug. The worst thing is – besides the children that ended up in hospital – is that they didn’t pull them from sale till 2 days later.
Apparently all the teens were buying them up and will be partying with them tonight. One of the reasons why my Moo (16 but I know wouldnt touch em) is home tonight.
Terrifying.
I wonder if consumers could organize some kind of boycott for the Christmas season and not buy any toys made in China. It might be a pipe dream, but just imagine what an impact it would have on our government and the toy manufacturers/distributors. Money talks, after all. I, for one, stopped buying Chinese-made goods several months ago.
May i suggest you stop being over-bearing parents, and go live life a little…after all it’s going to be over soon enough
bindies beads…my son is not stupid enough to eat a small plastic object for a cheap high
Thank you for this heads up! I have sent this on to my representatives and I am going to copy this to my own blog and my myspace page as well.
God Bless you for your actions!
Hear, hear!
Thanks for the links. My “action” so far has been to shop for made-in-the-USA, wooden toys for Christmas (Smooch is getting a kitchen and pots & pans) and requesting that grandparents and aunts and uncles who are shopping for us, respect our choice. We told them we’d rather Smooch get fewer presents (which won’t have to be taken away later!) if they are concerned about the cost. We also suggested memberships (like zoos, aquariums) and classes (gyms and music) as a toy alternative.
Even though having the CPSC change their approach would be a GOOD thing, my outrage is really for the companies who have not only outsourced the production of their toys to China – but who then subsequently, apparently, chose not to follow up and make sure that their guidelines were being followed!
But, I’ll gladly send an email if it helps bring a little more attention to this issue.
Here’s a great site to help you find US-made toys, games, and crafts (and cool grown-up stuff as well!).
Still Made in USA
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