Toxic Toys

This particular issue has me all raged up, and I'm without somewhere to direct it. Unseen greedy businessmen? Foreign slave owners? It's just that every once in a while there's a situation like this where you'd like to actually be able to create immediate action.

How messed up is this society when toys kill while people yawn?

Here's something from MotherJones.com - When the Danish government learned about toxic chemicals leaking from certain baby toys, it moved to get polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic out of teething rings, rubber ducks, and other toys kids can chew on. The Netherlands, Germany, and Austria followed suit, and the Spanish government even asked the European Union to ban PVC from such children's items. But last week the European Commission decided not to enact a temporary ban. Why not?
The answer is a little bit of science and a whole lot of economic diplomacy by the U.S. Department of Commerce, prodded by U.S. toy manufacturers like Mattel (maker of Barbie) and PVC producers like Exxon. In memos obtained by Greenpeace last month, the big corporations express their gratitude to the U.S. government for helping them to quash the European ban—never mind the question of whether their products are poisonous to children.

www.motherjones.com/.../columns/1998/07/pvc.html