TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

What's A Company To Do With Lead-Tainted Toys?

ADVERTISEMENT

By LOUISE STORY and DAVID BARBOZA, The New York Times

Published: December 22, 2007

Wondering what happened to all the lead-tainted products that have been recalled recently?

One company that recalled 350,000 lead-tainted journals and bookmarks plans to burn them in an incinerator. In the meantime, it is storing the hazardous parts in 55-gallon drums near its headquarters.
Toy makers are investigating whether they need to treat their tainted products with stabilization chemicals or if they must seal the toys in giant polyethylene bags. Mattel has decided to recycle some of its recalled toys into items such as park benches - after it fights pending litigation.

In China, meanwhile, several of Mattel's recalled toys can still be found on store shelves.

A few toys have even shown up on eBay and on Web sites that sell products in bulk. And some children's jewelry, heavily laden with lead, may be legally shipped to other countries for resale.

But that's only counting what is actually returned. Most of the unsafe toys and other products, it turns out, may still be in the hands of consumers.

"The first step is the product is recalled," said Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety at the Consumer Federation of America. "The second step is the manufacturer gets some of the product back. And the third step is: What happens next?"

American companies face strict federal regulations for disposing of recalled toys, but they are only responsible for the toys that show up. The other products left out there - and in many cases, that is more than 80 percent - fall out of their purview, a crack in the recall system that consumer advocates say leaves a giant question mark over the trail of recalled toys.

"If they're out of their control but they don't know where they are, I don't think the companies care," said Pamela Gilbert, a partner at the law firm of Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca, and the former executive director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Mattel and RC2, the maker of Thomas & Friends toys, are both storing the returned toys while they fight off lawsuits accusing them of harming children with those products. After the cases are resolved, Mattel says, it will try to recycle parts, like pieces of the Polly Pocket magnetic toys, safely into such items as park benches.

Companies like Jo-Ann Stores, Tween Brands, and Toys R Us say they are storing the returned toys in warehouses until they formulate a disposal plan.

"It's not like it's a real threat, just sitting in our warehouse," said Robert Atkinson, a spokesman for Tween Brands. "It's not going to leach into the soil or anything like that."

It has long been the case that product recalls generate dismal results. In the past, recalls have brought back 18 percent of products, on average, but low-priced toys and trinkets are returned at even lower rates - often less than 5 percent.

Research firms found that some toys recalled this summer have appeared this fall on auction Web sites such as eBay and other sites that sell products in bulk to businesses, including Made-in-China.com.

Aubrey Liu, who works in Made-in-China's Web operations department, said in an e-mail that it was difficult for her department to pick out recalled products on her site because the Consumer Product Safety Commission does not include names of manufacturers in recall notices.

Instead, the commission lists the importer or U.S.-based company that is distributing the product. The Web site has asked the commission for a list of the Chinese manufacturers behind the recalls, though it has not received it, Liu said.

There is no federal law or regulation against reselling recalled toys - a loophole that some legislators are trying to close. Still, eBay, among others, has agreed to try to keep recalled products off the market.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT