Quickly Noted: Toxic Toys

Now, this post might be a bit off focus for this blog, but as a parent, I feel it’s my duty to pass along this link. 

This year has been rife with parents digging through their kids toy boxes throwing more and more toys that have been found to be polluted, infected, covered with poisons from lead to things much, much worse.  Given that the Consumer Product Safety Commission is easily stymied, yet thinks it has all the money and help that it needs, even as the toy industry begs for some form of regulation, a non-profit research center has taken up the slack.

HealthyToys.org was developed by the Ecology Center in collaboration with the Washington Toxics Coalition to serve as a one stop shop for information on harmful and poisonous toys.  I’ve already added it to my del.icio.us page and will forward to all of my family later tonight.

I hope that if you’re buying any toys this holiday season, you check them against the HealthyToys.org database, and hopefully it will cause this critical public health agency to actually do its job.

Big thanks to the bloggers at The Pump Handle for keeping on top of this.

Promotional photo from HealthyToys.org