Face to Face with Toy Safety: Understanding an Unexpected Threat

Abstract

Until March 2007, thousands of kids around the country could be found playing with toy trucks, helicopters, and soldiers sold under the Elite Operations brand name. The toys were fun, and they looked great with their thick coat of glossy paint. Trouble was, that paint was loaded with 5,000 ppm lead, a potent developmental neurotoxicant with no known safe exposure level. When the high lead levels were detected during a routine inspection, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a recall, the first for a lead-contaminated toy in 2007. Lead-triggered toy recalls were rare, but not unheard of in the United States, with just a handful issued in the last decade. Eventually, nearly 130,000 Elite Operations units—made by a Hong Kong company called Toy Century Industrial and imported by Toys R Us—would be recalled. In a typical year, the recall would have barely ruffled the $22 billion U.S. toy industry, which sells 3 billion units annually. But 2007 was far from typical as far as import recalls were concerned. Contaminated pet food, cough syrup, toothpaste, and other products—mostly made in China—were being yanked off store shelves under the full glare of the media. Given that most of its wares are made in China, the toy industry ramped up its inspections for lead, and found that high levels were a lot more common than they had assumed. By year’s end, 42 recalls involving nearly 6 million toys had been issued because of excessive lead levels. Lead-contaminated toys became one of the biggest environmental health stories of recent times. It was shocking to think of children being poisoned while playing, and by lead no less, a toxic metal that consumers assumed had been purged from products long ago. Now lead was back, sparking a furor over toy safety.