Playing With Fire

Last year I blogged about an amazing nonprofit group that runs a website called www.healthytoys.org. Through private donations, Healthy Toys accepts suggestions from it's readers as to which toys to test for safety. No safety tests being quietly sponsored by toy companies. This group is completely in it for the kids.

Healthy Toys hadn't updated it's database in quite some time. Now it's back and better than ever. Thank you!!

Please take a minute to look-up your gifts before you give them to a child you love. You can also look-up the toys you already own. Be prepared to completely freak out and feel abused by the toy industry. I personally have freaked out on a couple of occasions after searching (and finding)toys that the family owns.

It's rocks and sticks for the kids again this Christmas.

The toys being tested by Healthy Toys aren't obscure toys that you've never seen. This list plays out like the who's who of every playroom across the country.

On the Healthy Toys site, I like to search by type of toys. "Vehicles" is always my first step. Those millions of tiny little cars and trucks that Little Guy lives for can't be that bad. Right?

Wrong!

Unfortunately there are literally thousands and thousands of little vehicles out there and Healthy Toys can't test them all. What do I do? Toss them like I did to Girlie's PVC-laden baby dolls? Hope he grows-up and outgrows them soon (never!)?


For one quick example on one of the hundreds of toys you can find on Healthy Toys, peak around to see if you have a Leapster 2 hanging around the house. If so, then you also have dangerously high levels of lead and arsenic with lower levels of bromine, chromium and mercury tossed in too.

If you knew these facts before you bought this educational game system, would you still have purchased it? Would you allow your kids to touch these poisons? Breathe them in? What do you do now that you've already spent your hard-earned money?

What do we do when toy companies have two production lines? One for the EU and one for the kids of the US? What do we do? Why aren't we fighting for our kids a little louder?

Brushing With Poison

Very few licensed characters get through the front door of my house. I don't appreciate companies using my kids for free advertising. Here is the story of one that got by.

Each and every morning and evening I have to remind my kids to brush their teeth. I would do anything to make them want to brush their teeth more often and for longer periods of time. So one day I was at the store with Little Guy. He spied a Power Ranger toothbrush and asked for the "hero" toothbrush. Luckily he still has no idea who the Power Rangers are. I bought the toothbrush for him hoping that he would want to use it more than his boring plain toothbrush.

Fast forward to last night. I opened my email box only to receive an update from http://www.healthytoys.org/. Healthy Toys is an independent toy testing website that I have blogged about before here. You can search for toys you already own, vote for the toys that will be tested next and suggest a toy to be tested. HT tests for lead, mercury, PVC/chlorine, cadmium and arsenic. Yummy!




Little Guy's toothbrush was listed as containing lead and chlorine/PVC in the face. The face? That part was getting wet, being touched by his little hands and possibly even put into his mouth. My head is still spinning!

How could any company not know exactly what they are making a child's toothbrush out of? Do their own children use this toothbrush?





Being one for solutions, off to Whole Foods Little Guy and I went. We found a brand called Preserve by Recycline. http://www.recycline.com/

Recycline's handles are made of 100% recycled plastic. The company has partnered with Stoneyfield Yogurt and use many of their old yogurt cups to create the handles. The brush comes in a vented traveling case. Even the paper insert is made of 100% recycled materials. Best of all, Recycline gives you a postage-paid mailer to return the used brushes and cases. The company will recycle them into new brushes. Very cool!

I am going to suggest that Healthy Toys tests these toothbrushes too, but I feel fairly certain that they will be a safer option than that scary character toothbrush.



UPDATE: I just got an email from the friendly people at Recycline. They are sending out 10 of their toothbrushes for me to give away to readers. I'll keep you posted when they come in.