Posted on 06/23/2007 4:20:09 PM PDT by neverdem
FOR decades, Thomas the Tank Engine and his fellow trains have been teaching children important life lessons. Now the plucky locomotives — especially the haughty and sometimes naughty James the Red Engine — are serving up important lessons about regulating environmental poisons in the global economy.
Last week, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that a toy maker, RC2 Corporation of Oak Brook, Ill., was recalling some 1.5 million Thomas & Friends wooden railway toys because their bright red or yellow coatings contain lead.
The commission routinely issues recalls of lead-tainted children’s products, but usually these are trinkets — bubble-gum-machine toys, cheap imported novelties and no-brand children’s jewelry — and provoke little public outcry. Thomas & Friends products are a different story: they are purchased in upscale toy stores for $10 to $70 apiece, often by politically empowered parents who are extremely averse to exposing their children to contaminants of any kind.
The Product Safety Commission has not disclosed the actual lead content in the recalled toys. But a commission spokesman said RC2’s Chinese manufacturer appears to have substituted highly leaded pigments for some portion of the lead-free paint the corporation had specified.
As always happens when a new lead hazard is discovered, a spirited game of blame and counterblame has ensued: RC2 should have exercised greater control over its Chinese partners; the safety commission should have caught the problem earlier; the Bush administration should not have cut the commission’s budget by 10 percent in the last two years, forcing it to reduce its force of investigators and compliance agents.
It is important to do what we can to prevent the import of dangerous toys. But it is at least as important to help our international partners curtail the use of lead and other toxic substances in their...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
Hell, I grew up with all kinds of wooden toys all slathered over with lead based paint. Later on in my redneck life I got into melting down old car batteries, to make lead weights on my fishing nets. After that, I got into casting bullets, for my muzzle loading guns, and even centerfire stuff. I have no idea how much lead is now dissolved in my system. I have no idea how much lead I passed on to my offspring.
Thing is, none of us are retarded! Thing is, if you have only the brains that God gave a cockroach, you will be hard put to make a kid able, to piss down it’s leg, in case of fire!
Excuses, excuses, excuses!
I always thought that Thomas seemed somewhat anachronistic. The only human character I've seen the show is named "Sir Topham Hatt". And where are kids these days going to see steam trains? Nevertheless little boys seem to like Thomas. We live in an area where train whistles can often be heard. When my son hears one of these he often says: "There's Thomas!".
Watch the tuna fish too. And cranberries.
And the dog food.
The Chinese murdered my dog.
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