September 27, 2007 by serinat
And this is just what’s above the board. Can you imagine how many other toys/jewerly products out there are slipping through the cracks and harming children? I urge you to click and check out the pictures, even if you don’t think you have any of these toys. You might have them, or your friends might, and it’s good to be aware.
More Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway Toys
Target Toy Gardening Tools & Chairs
Children’s Toy Rakes from JoAnn Fabrics
Guidecraft Children’s Puppet Theaters
I am Serina, and this is my blog. I'm a follower of Jesus, wife to a part-time pastor/part-time engineer/part-time seminary student, homeschooling mom to five (two girls, 10 & 7, and three boys, 5, 2, & brand new), poultry rancher to numerous chickens (currently: 10 Buff Orpingtons, 5 Buckeyes), craft/hobby addict, ultimate DIYer, environmental activist, learner of photography, and 1975 split entry renovator. I am always in pursuit of simplicity. In 2008, we moved from the city to 10 acres in the country, and we're digging in to organic small scale farming! Oh, and I love dark chocolate. And coffee. And tea...
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Great tips! I guess I have been lucky, none of my stuff has been recalled!
We were recently given a Bissell steam cleaner, and on the second page of the manual, it says, “the power cord contains lead, known to the state of California to cause birth defects, etc…. Wash your hands after handling.”
I called up the company, and the sales lady said that most power cords have lead in the shield around the cord. It is a “minute” amount, and it should only cause a problem if you have a high lead amount in your body already.
Is that really true? I’ll have to search around on the internet, but figured you would know off the top of your head.
I’ve seen that warning on almost every powered thing I buy these days, I think. It is just the kind of “lawyer warning” I object to because it’s ubiquitous and thus almost universally ignored. Kind of like EULAs, which even our attorney doesn’t read completely.
My complaint is that there are so many warnings, and so many of them are for ridiculous things (“Coffee may be hot,” “Don’t use this electrical appliance in the shower,” “Remove plastic from pizza before putting into oven,” etc.) that the important warnings get lost in a very poor signal-to-noise ratio.
I’d say the standard “mother warnings” apply here: don’t chew on power cords, and always wash your hands before eating. Good ol’ soap-and-water covereth a multitude of risks.
The Bissell lady is right–most power cords (I’d say all) have lead in them. But, she’s a bit lax in saying that it will “only cause a problem if you have a high lead amount in your body already.”
Research has already shown that no amount of lead is safe–we weren’t intended to ingest/breathe such things. However, we also know that lead is everywhere (especially in paint and electronics). Most of my kitchen appliances have cords with lead in them, and our dusty computers have plenty of components with lead in them.
My solution, at this point, is to wash my hands after contact with cords (sometimes this means a lot of hand washing), don’t let the kids plug things in unless they wash their hands afterwards, and don’t store cords inside anything that will touch food (i.e. wrap the blender cord up inside the blender itself).
SursumCorda is right–there are too many ridiculous warnings out there. But this one is warranted. I just wish warnings were more specific–i.e. where the hazard is, how to avoid it, etc.
I know this post is a few days old, but my husband just sent me an article that is very relevant.
It’s about lead content being found in lipsticks. What I found to be interesting, was the fact that it was usually found in the higher-priced brands rather than the lower-priced brands. I would have assumed the opposite, honestly.
Anyway, here is the article which was on Reuters News Service a few days ago.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2007-10-11T225858Z_01_N11409645_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIPSTICK-LEAD.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2
Em, I’ve been loosely following the lipstick stories lately. It doesn’t surprise me, but I wonder that I didn’t question it earlier. Good thing I almost never wear lipstick anymore! I’ll have to stick to my Burt’s Bees makeup for Sundays. =)
I’m also relieved that I rarely wear lipstick reading this story, but you have to wonder what makes these companies add it and then justify it by saying it’s within standards if there are no standards.
Especially with the risk being so high – I know how many times I reapply my lip balm throughout a day, I have to suspect it’s similar depending on what type of lipstick one wears. I’d really rather not think about how high the ingestion rate would be in those circumstances.
I hope the government agencies, or someone, is working to create stiffer standards and better labeling, as you mentioned before, to provide clearer warnings about the risks and related information.
Well – I got kind of busy, and stopped reading blogs on October 12th, so I didn’t get back to this article. I went through a number of our appliance manuals, and I couldn’t any references to lead in any of them.
So, I am still suspicious that it is a particularly needed ingredient, unless our other appliances just didn’t mention it.