Posted on 05/06/2007 4:13:48 PM PDT by mom4kittys
Arlington Heights resident Julie Furer said she bought vinyl-backed bibs for 3-month-old son Jensen because they stopped the drool from leaking through.
Previously, Jensen, who turns 1 today, had been using cloth bibs, but they had proved ineffective.
I called him Waterfall. That was my nickname for him, said Julie Furers mother, Mount Prospect resident Marilyn Furer. He would be soaking wet, because he was just constantly drooling.
Jensen would also put the bib in his mouth when he was hungry, something that came to Marilyn Furers attention when he started using the vinyl-backed bibs.
It caused Marilyn to think back to reports she had heard of lead being found in plastic school lunch boxes.
So there I think, hmmm, plastic in the mouth, plastic in school lunch boxes. What the heck, Ill just go get a (lead testing) kit just to play it safe. I never thought it would come out like that.
Using a household lead test kit produced by Homax Products Inc., she crushed the two points on the barrel of the testing swab, shook the swab and squeezed it until a yellow liquid appeared on the tip. Then she rubbed the swab tip on the test area. To her surprise, the swab tip turned pink, indicating the presence of lead. She wound up testing 20 bibs, with eight of them yielding a positive result.
She sent the bibs, which were made in China and sold at Wal-Mart, to the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, Calif., which had done the research on the lunch boxes.
Testing commissioned by the center revealed that one of the Baby Connection brand vinyl bibs, which were sold exclusively at Wal-Mart stores, had a lead level of 9,700 parts per million, more than 16 times greater than the legal limit for lead in paint.
The bibs were later tested in Illinois and New York, revealing similarly high levels, with the result that Wal-Mart has stopped selling the bibs in those states indefinitely. In addition, the Illinois attorney general announced a statewide recall of the Wal-Mart bibs.
These vinyl bibs pose a lead poisoning threat to infants and toddlers who are at the most vulnerable age, said Caroline Cox, research director at the Center for Environmental Health and author of a report on lead in baby bibs released by the center this week. As every parent knows, young children commonly chew and suck on their bibs, so if the bib is contaminated, children are being directly exposed to lead.
For Marilyn Furer, it wasnt the first time her activism had produced results. When her daughter Julie, Jensens mom, was 18 months old, she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. In 1973, Marilyn, along with a small group of concerned parents, founded the first chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (now known as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) in Illinois.
She ran the whole organization as president out of our house in Mount Prospect, Julie Furer said.
Marilyn Furer is calling for a national ban on lead-based products used by infants and children.
As far as Im concerned, any trace amount is unacceptable, she said.
One should be suspicious, she said, of any product that uses plastic. If it cant be made without lead, it shouldnt be made. People should use the double cloth bibs or buy wooden toys.
Above all, she said, one should buy American and be suspicious of imports, especially from China.
Also, she said parents should get their children tested for lead.
Marilyn Furer said it is nice to hear that people are proud of her for bringing the issue to light, but is surprised it wasnt thought of before. Im disappointed and disillusioned that our public, governmental agencies havent had in place already something that stops these kinds of things from coming on in the first place.
Let’s see—poison in pet food and human food, poison in medicine mostly meant for children, lead in dishes that we eat out of and lead in baby bibs that babies put in their mouths. And that’s the condensed version! What MORE would we need to convince us that China is not worthy of our trade agreement?
>Let the free marketeers justify this.<
That shouldn’t be difficult at all. The goal was for private globalist businesses to make money. That was done. The goal was accomplished.
Right, let’s all calm down. As they’d say in France, let them eat Melamine!
Me too . I now use only glass to micro wave in after all I have been reading about this ...I am avoiding anything from China.
Well, THAT convinces me. We must stop all trade will China right now.
What a gift of persuasion you have!
That was easy. Next :)
Sorry, but I have read that vaccinations in some cases can cause autism.
But can you say for sure that LEAD can't be a contributing factor as well..?
sw
This is a good article, and thanks M4K!
I am making a diligent effort to avoid as many ‘made in China’ products as possible, if not for the health issues, for the moral aspect as many (if not all) of their products are made with slave labor, and by purchasing ‘made in China’ we are enabling the continuation of such slavery. (I do try, whenever possible, to purchase products made in Taiwan, as they are of infinitely higher quality, and they are a true friend of the U.S., as opposed to the ChiComs in Beijing).
Another area is produce, a good friend of mine told me about a particular kind of apple she was very enthused about, called a ‘Fuji’ apple (my first thought? ‘Japan’) but when I checked the produce section of my local market, the Fuji apples I saw were all labeled ‘product of China’, and not knowing what was sprayed on them or how they were grown, I said ‘thanks but no thanks’.
Again, thanks for the post Mom4Kittys! :)
Yes, mercury in vaccinations done in the past may be a link. Don’t know about lead.
I do know that one reason for the “increase” in autism is that the spectrum and degree of autism has been increased in recent years. More kids are diagnosed because there is such a broad brush.
I will try and find a link to back this up - I am FReeping on my PDA right now!
This is horrible.
:(
What in the heck are we suppose to do.
Fuji’s really are good apples and fortunately they are grown in lots of places other than China so you should be able to buy and enjoy them in the future.
Not ALL trade. I would not object to sending them a few nukes.
We may very well have the chance.
I remember my Bible School teacher, when covering Revelations, said that we are going to band together with Russia to fight China.
I just had an interesting thought. At that time it was the USSR, (this was the 50s) yet I remember him saying Russia. Huh.
Rus = red = ruddy = Edom = Essau is how that argument goes. Another variant of it is the town/city of Rus.
Did you notice that in the past week, Russia put the hammer & sickle back on their flag?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1828722/posts
I knew a family who had a perfectly healthy boy that got ill after a immunization and ended up with very severe autism and the lot of vaccines were found to have been bought from Japan (iirc) which was a bargain price for the drug company but had a contaminant in it that made many toddlers ill.
All our “made in China” ceramic eating dishes are in a box in the shop outside. I’ll try to get a lead testing kit.
Plastic? Never touch the stuff! (or microwaves!)
What struck me as I thought back was that my teacher spoke of Russia, not of the USSR. The USSR was the ‘country’ back then, and of course there was no sign of it’s future fall, except maybe to RR. He was simply interpreting the Bible as he saw it, yet he spoke of something that wouldn’t reappear for decades. I think we only spent about a week on the entire book.
Yes, I did see the news of the Hammer and Sickle. Not a good omen.
Horrible. We know a little boy who was fine before immunizations, sickly afterwards, and now has autism.
I quit using my MW altogether for the reasons you stated. At work, they banned heating baby formula in the MW because the Docs say it alters the nutrition factor.
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