Santa Giveth and the parents taketh away.
PVC (polyvinyl chloride) in toys. Who knew? Well to be fair, my wife has been talking about looking into what's in the kids toys for a long long while. Then she really started looking. And now I've been dragged kicking and well.. whining (hey I'm sick give me a break) into the fiasco. Its apparently been making the rounds for over a decade. I'm shocked.
Why can't toy manufacturers stop poisoning our children? After visiting HealthyToys.org one by one, the pvc containing wonders of the play area are removed. Not the little people! And the littlest petshop pets too? Crap.
Going overboard are we? I admit I'm still in denial about most of it. There is a new federal law banning phthalates in kids toys. However the replacements apparently leave much to be desired if you believe this article. Could we be tossing out relatively harmless toys and end up buying something even worse? The old devil you know syndrome. Apparently a safe plasticizer is a tall order for the chemical producers of the world.
So there goes the Dora bath toy, and that cool cruisin cop car that sounds a siren when its repeatedly rammed into stuff... gonna miss that... and the beach ball, Mr Potatohead, and who knows what else.
Not all vinyl products are the same toxic mess. Some are just more toxic than others. Much depends on the additives which makes it harmful (outside the normal smorgasbord of VOCs). Vinyl is in... everything. Our new window frames, the window blinds, the dang vinyl flooring in the bathrooms, and the garden hoses. Most of us have been told for a long time to not drink from the garden hose. Glee. Oh and shower curtains, don't even get me started. The good news is we're not chewing on most of these things like the kids are on Mr Potatohead's nose. The bad news is, we gotta breathe.
The plastic future? I miss it already. We'll be moving to a cave, eating out of wooden bowls and cooking with a solar oven when this is over. Not reading this by smoke signal? That's so 2009.
PVC (polyvinyl chloride) in toys. Who knew? Well to be fair, my wife has been talking about looking into what's in the kids toys for a long long while. Then she really started looking. And now I've been dragged kicking and well.. whining (hey I'm sick give me a break) into the fiasco. Its apparently been making the rounds for over a decade. I'm shocked.
Why can't toy manufacturers stop poisoning our children? After visiting HealthyToys.org one by one, the pvc containing wonders of the play area are removed. Not the little people! And the littlest petshop pets too? Crap.
Going overboard are we? I admit I'm still in denial about most of it. There is a new federal law banning phthalates in kids toys. However the replacements apparently leave much to be desired if you believe this article. Could we be tossing out relatively harmless toys and end up buying something even worse? The old devil you know syndrome. Apparently a safe plasticizer is a tall order for the chemical producers of the world.
So there goes the Dora bath toy, and that cool cruisin cop car that sounds a siren when its repeatedly rammed into stuff... gonna miss that... and the beach ball, Mr Potatohead, and who knows what else.
Not all vinyl products are the same toxic mess. Some are just more toxic than others. Much depends on the additives which makes it harmful (outside the normal smorgasbord of VOCs). Vinyl is in... everything. Our new window frames, the window blinds, the dang vinyl flooring in the bathrooms, and the garden hoses. Most of us have been told for a long time to not drink from the garden hose. Glee. Oh and shower curtains, don't even get me started. The good news is we're not chewing on most of these things like the kids are on Mr Potatohead's nose. The bad news is, we gotta breathe.
The plastic future? I miss it already. We'll be moving to a cave, eating out of wooden bowls and cooking with a solar oven when this is over. Not reading this by smoke signal? That's so 2009.
