Sweet, looks like I know what I’m doing tonight!
No, I didn’t, but it doesn’t much change anything. I’ve not met a kid yet who would innocently drink nail polish remover, and it’s kept in the high cabinet anyway. The point here (for me) isn’t “oooh, margarine is one molecule away from plastic! Scary!” it’s "Holy Shit! People okayed a cost cutting measure in the manufacture of a child’s toy and used an unapproved, outright toxic (really toxic, not “they’re polluting our bodily fluids” toxic) chemical that’s released when the toy is put in the mouth or swallowed, or maybe even just licked (all the articles I’ve seen have been very vague on this point - how much exposure is required for negative health effects?). Even kids who aren’t big on putting toys all the way into the mouth will frequently *lick *toys (don’t ask me why.)
The fact that people are shocked and twitterpated by small children tripping on recreational drugs is to be expected, of course. But this would be just as newsworthy if someone had saved a buck by tainting the toys with, say, cyanide or arsenic.
I saw a news report on (one of?) the kid who was hospitalized from this. He apparently ate several dozen of his older sister’s aquadots. This wasn’t like he licked one; he was still puking them up after arriving at the hospital.
Dude, that was my mom’s first rule after “giving me” a little brother: do not leave your small toys out; he will choke on them, or at least try to eat them to the point that you won’t want them back. It was left to me to decide which was worse.
Yep. I had this argument with my MIL (my first mistake)–it’s my contention that you get what you pay for. There’s a reason those prices are so low. I’d guess lack of regulation, cheap labor and cutting corners in materials are the big three.
Lego makes Duplos for babies–just an idea. I agree with** WhyNot**–and I’ll add this: for this company to have this issue, with a toy that requires water or moisture to “work”–they should have tested it more thoroughly.
The majority of nail polish removers available in the US are based on either acetone or ethyl acetate. Other removers using gamma butyrolactone (the one that metabolizes to GHB) contain bitter agents to dissuade ingestion. It is recognized as dangerous by the FDA, and actually at least one kid has been stupid enough to eat GBL nail polish remover according to this abstract from Clinical Toxicology.
Parents, don’t let your babies grow up to suck nail pads.
Poisonous chemicals are in virtually every household. We can hope, however, that they’re in containers labeled “Drano” or “Ammonia” and not on children’s toys in a misguided attempt at increasing profit margins.
And the most precious resource of all: baby oil.
I use a press to get mine.
Geez are you guys ever sick and twisted.
I knew there was a reason I keep paying the annual fee.
Just an FYI – rendering in a pot over a heat source gives a better yield.
I am giggling hysterically now. I like Frank again.
Y’all are disgusting and vile.
Everyone knows the purest and best baby oil is captured by a steam-distillation process!
ETA: :smack: :smack: :smack: Oh, great, now *this *is the first post on the second page. They started it on Page 1, people! Really, go back, go back, it wasn’t me! It was a set-up, I tell ya!
If you put two baby girls in there the oil is extra-virgin.
{runs away quickly}
But as Stalin said about the debate over quality vs. quantity, “Sometimes quantity has a quality all its own.”
But how many times was it done out of ignorance and how many because “we know it’s deadly, but who cares”?
Who are you referring to?
After all these beads where taken off the shelf the other day i thought it would be over and would have to hear all these a current affairs shows carry on about it. I just read in the papper there worried about schoolies (I guess what the people in the usa would call springer break) taking these beads with them!
See, that’s the part I don’t get. If he just had one or two, I could understand; every kid has put a foreign object in his mouth at least once. But “several dozen”? WTF? Who was watching him? How does a kid eat “several dozen” beads? It can’t be like they tasted good.
When I was a kid in the 1970s, choking was the Big Bad. The proof of that is all around you, in the form of labels on everything that say “Choking hazard; keep out of reach of small children.” But that makes sense: a child can choke on anything, toxic or not. Now it’s a matter of objects that are small enough that a kid won’t choke on them, but oh noes, they’re toxic! So it’s not the responsibility of the parents to make sure their kid doesn’t eat several dozen frakking beads; it’s the responsibility of the manufacturers to make sure that whatever he puts in his mouth is chemically benign. Does not compute.
Are you referring to the quackery present in the 18th and 19th centuries–the so-called patent medicines? (and they’re still out there today) or something else?
The chicanery and the impulse to cut costs no matter the outcome is present in every unchecked industry-even today.
( Aside: I have never believed that old line about “it’s in the company’s best interest to make a quality product.” There are too many people out there who are easily duped by shoddy merchandise. The key is to have just enough regs so that innovation is not stifled, but safety is maintained).
But we are not talking of cheap leather or badly made appliances. We are talking about a substance that when ingested becomes toxic. Yes, America has a history, as do all countries, of businessmen attempting to sell bad shit to people. How on earth does that make this Chinese manufacture of this toy ok or less dangerous? The snake oil salesmen in America’s past are irrelevant. China needs to regulate its industry NOW-like the rest of the world.