Toxin in toyland

The risk of lead poisoning from toys may be small, experts say, but it's one children should avoid

A member of the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow used a meter to test a child's lunchbox and backpack for lead. (Jon Chase for the Boston Globe)

Email|Print| Text size – + By Felicia Mello

Globe Correspondent / December 3, 2007

As an affordable housing consultant, Laura Spark knew about the dangers of lead paint in homes. So when the Jamaica Plain mother of twin girls learned at a meeting of a local environmental group about recent recalls of lead-tainted toys, she went home and immediately tossed out an imported ceramic tea set and several soft plastic toys.

"But then of course I go to school the next day and everyone's got a vinyl backpack on," she said, noting that vinyl also may have small amounts of lead. "I'm thinking, 'Am I being a nut for throwing all this stuff away, or am I being a responsible mom?' "

Parents across the country have faced similar dilemmas in the past few months as federal regulators announced a wave of discoveries of children's products containing high levels of lead - from dolls to trains to jewelry. Of the 61 toy recalls the Consumer Products Safety Commission oversaw in the last year - affecting some 25 million toys - close to one-third involved lead.

So, how worried should parents be?

Specialists on lead poisoning say toys are just one of many ways children can be exposed to lead, which also exists in the air and water and can be passed from mother to child through the umbilical cord or breast milk. And children are more likely to be injured choking on a small toy or crashing their bicycle into a car than by playing with something that contains lead, according to the safety commission.

But many argue that lead in toys is one threat that can and should be stamped out.

"There are some risks that are difficult to avoid and others that are much more easy to avoid," said Joel Schwartz, an environmental epidemiologist and co-director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. Lead in toys "is not terribly controllable by me or you, but it's easily controllable by the government."

Scientists have found that lead stunts brain development in young children - a link so strong that the federal government has completely phased out the additive from gasoline and prohibited all but small amounts in house paint since the 1970s. While acute reactions - like that of a Minnesota boy who died last year after swallowing a piece of jewelry that contained 99 percent lead - are rare, doctors fret about the cumulative effect as the toxin builds up in a child's body.

"No amount of lead is good," said Dr. Sean Palfrey, a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center and director of the Boston Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. "One exposure may not be serious. But 10 or 100 may very well be, both for this generation and for future generations."

Lead causes problems for toddlers living in older homes, who chew on sweet-tasting paint chips and become poisoned. Children from certain ethnic backgrounds also can become exposed to the metal in ayurvedic medicine from India, Middle Eastern cosmetics, and some imported canned foods. The number of children nationwide with elevated blood lead levels has declined steadily over the last two decades as the federal ban on leaded gasoline took effect and local governments launched aggressive lead paint abatement programs.

While federal law prohibits painting toys with any solution that contains greater than .06 percent lead, many tainted toys arrive from China and other countries where regulations on toxic substances are rarely enforced. There, manufacturers sometimes purchase industrial paint laced with high levels of lead - it is cheaper, brighter, and more durable.

Toy makers also use the element as a stabilizer in vinyl, the soft plastic that makes up everything from lunchboxes to rubber ducks. Putting lead in plastic does not violate federal law, but the toxin can still leach out of a toy if a child sucks on it, said Joel Tickner, an environmental health scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. The lead in vinyl is not as likely to come off as paint from a toy, but the exposure can accumulate over time.

"The fact that we're seeing lead in toys is nothing new," said Tickner. "It's been there, it's just that we're taking notice of it now."

To become ill, children need to swallow lead or inhale its dust, said Dr. S. Allen Counter, a Harvard neurologist who teaches a class on lead and other brain toxins. Contaminated jewelry poses a particular hazard because children often suck on necklaces and bracelets, he said.

Once ingested, lead attacks the mitochondria - a cell's power plant - and can cause a range of cognitive problems as well as weakness and anemia. In a study published last month in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers at Cornell University, the University of Washington, and other institutions found that even small amounts of lead in blood can affect children's performance on intelligence tests. Children with blood lead levels of 5 to 10 micrograms per deciliter - still lower than the current standard for lead poisoning - earned average IQ scores five points lower than children with less exposure.

Adults can endure greater exposure than children because their nervous systems are no longer developing and their digestive systems absorb less of the lead.

While poor black and immigrant children typically bear the brunt of lead poisoning because they live in older, crumbling neighborhoods, the new concern about toys cuts across racial and class lines, Counter noted.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health held hearings in mid-November on proposed regulations that would set maximum levels for lead in jewelry. Environmental groups are urging the department to go further and ban the element in any products marketed to children.

At the national level, bills under consideration in the House and Senate would extend the federal standard for lead in paint to all children's products and tighten it to .01 percent over four years. The bills also call for an overhaul of the products safety commission, which has come under fire from consumer groups and some legislators who say it is understaffed and unable to protect consumers.

The legislation has the support of the toy industry, which is still coping with fallout from the recalls as the holiday season approaches.

"We are concerned that customers are nervous and that's why we're trying to do so much to reassure them," said Joan Lawrence, vice president of standards and government affairs for the Toy Industry Association. "It appears that in some cases we had grown to trust longtime suppliers and when a supplier said it's lead-free and put it in writing, we believed that. [But] ultimately it is the responsibility of the US importer or brand to ensure the product is safe."

Manufacturers already possess the technology to replace lead in plastics with safer alternatives, she added.

In the meantime, the Consumers Union is advising parents to avoid buying metal jewelry for young children and to be careful of toys bought at dollar stores and in vending machines. Parents can also buy a home lead test kit for about $10 to $20 or pay about $200 for a professional lab to examine the toy.

"Our message to parents is to be aware that there's lead out there," Palfrey said. "Try to be vigilant about not letting kids chew on things that you're not sure are safe. That's a great message no matter what."