Practically every week here at Strollerderby there's a new Things Fall Apart feature, and most of them seem to involve cheap toys or jewelry that's either made of lead, contains lead, or is covered with lead. WTF with all the lead?
It turns out that much of the blame can be placed on China. Chinese-made toys now represent 70-80% of the toys sold in the U.S. At the same time, recalls of Chinese-made products doubled in the last five year, making China responsible for 60% of the product recalls annually, up from 36% in 2000. Every one of the 24 toy recalls made last year for safety reasons was of a Chinese-made toy.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, from which we receive our recall notices, claims to be working on the problem, but staffing there has declined by 10% under the Bush administration while at the same time recalls have skyrocketed. As a result, the U.S. toy industry is largely self-regulated, and recalls are mainly made on a voluntary basis, which all means that unsafe conditions can persist for months? years? with no one knowing or reporting to consumers that there is a potential danger.
My suggestion to end this crisis, since I live as I do in Happy Bubble Land, would be to change the materialistic consumer-driven society we live in and curtail the number of cheap shoddy toys that we import from countries who are trying to sell toys and may let certain safety issues slide. It would cut down on clutter, too: clearly a win-win situation.
