Those bastards let kids eat out of shitty lunchboxes with high amounts of lead!

[originalpckelly]

Courtesy of DeepModem Mom in Latest Breaking News:

Lead-laden lunchboxes OK'd by government
February 18, 2007


A researcher with the Center for Environmental Health, displays a swab with pink coloring indicating lead contamination on a lunchbox in Oakland, California, in January.

(AP) -- In 2005, when government scientists tested 60 soft, vinyl lunchboxes, they found that one in five contained amounts of lead that medical experts consider unsafe -- and several had more than 10 times hazardous levels.

But that's not what they told the public.

Instead, the Consumer Product Safety Commission released a statement that they found "no instances of hazardous levels." And they refused to release their actual test results, citing regulations that protect manufacturers from having their information released to the public.

That data was not made public until The Associated Press received a box of about 1,500 pages of lab reports, in-house e-mails and other records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed a year ago....

***

"They found levels that we consider very high," said Alexa Engelman, a researcher at the Oakland, California-based Center for Environmental Health, which has filed a series of legal complaints about lead in lunchboxes.

"They knew this all along and they didn't take action on it. It's upsetting to me. Why are we, as a country, protecting the companies? We should be protecting the kids. I don't think in this instance they did their job."...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/02/18/lunchbox.lead.ap/index.html



A researcher with the Center for Environmental Health, displays a swab with pink coloring indicating lead contamination on a lunchbox in Oakland, California, in January.

[acmavm]

1. Gotta protect big business. They're soooo picked on and

persecuted.

[originalpckelly]

2. Yeah, well, they ought to have a big fucking foot shoved up their asses!

:grr:

[NMMNG]

3. That's why animal rights/environmentalist groups that attack

corporations are higher up on the FBI's terrorist watch list than hate groups that attack people. Can't have corporations losing money now. :eyes:

[originalpckelly]

4. Or it might be because they've burned down a whole lot of stuff...

in the process hurting the environment greatly.

[NMMNG]

8. As if the Republicans give a hoot about the environment.

It's all about the money to them.

[originalpckelly]

12. Yeah, well ETA and ALF shouldn't be burning buildings down...

that's why they're on the list.

[NMMNG]

14. No, they shouldn't be

But they don't deserve to be considered a higher threat priority than groups that maim/kill human beings.

[fasttense]

5. Free Market

That's all it is. It's a free market that can do anything it wants including turning our children into lead induced imbeciles so they can make a profit off them. Why regulate such silly little things as chemicals that lower IQ and cause other serious illnesses in our children. Free trade is worth, well, the trade off of sickly children. Deregulation, affecting our future one child at a time. :sarcasm:

[Patriought]

6. Excuse the profanity, but...

...but what the FUCK?!?!

"citing regulations that protect manufacturers from having their information released to the public."

I thought it was called the Consumer Product safety commission? How the hell is it then that there are regulations that protect the manufacturers from letting the consumer know of unsafe products.

What is happening to our country?

[originalpckelly]

7. I know, this is the last shot for me. Anyone who'd risk children in such a way...

is a complete monster.

[jody]

9. CEH said "The majority of lunchboxes that CEH tested do not contain lead. However, at this time the

only way to know for sure is to test the lunchbox yourself."

See Does my lunchbox have lead?

What products did CEH test?
CEH has only tested soft plastic lunchboxes. We don’t know whether lead may be present in hard plastic or metal boxes at this time. The brands that have tested high include Generation Sports, Frozn/Ingear, Roundhouse/Targus, Crayola, American Studio, Igloo, Sanford, Fast Forward, Arizona Jean Company, JC Penny, Lisa Frank, Animations/Accessory Network, Holiday Fair/Mischief Makers, Extreme Gear/Romar, SubZero/Global Advantage, Chill, Big Dogs, Childress baby bottle carriers, Innovo, East End Accessories/Worldwide Dreams. Not all lunchboxes with these brand names necessarily contain lead.

How dangerous are lunchboxes with lead?
The levels CEH found in the lunchboxes are not high enough by themselves to cause acute lead poisoning during normal use. However, with prolonged use or if your child is exposed to lead from other sources, a leaded lunchbox would add to their health risk. Because lead has been shown to cause developmental problem in young children at very low levels, CEH believes it is important to eliminate all controllable sources of lead exposure, including lunchboxes.

[Buzz Clik]

10. Ok, the lead standards protect kids from harmful exposures, but .... huh?

So these lunchboxes contain elevated lead. That's bad, no question.

But pardon me for asking -- what is the pathway of exposure? Little bitty kids eat paint chips, dogs and babies eat dirt. But who the hell eats the whole lunchbox? That lead simply will not leach out of the lunchbox into your sandwich. No way, no how.

It sucks that the manufacturers were being protected, but there is so little opportunity for harm here.

Have the manufacturers issue a recall, and move on.

[originalpckelly]

11. They showed in their tests that the surface contained lead...

and that it could simply be wiped to contaminate something.

A very practical situation where a child would ingest the lead is a piece of fruit. A mother/father washes the fruit, then puts it in the box, thinking it would be safe. The moist fruit picks up the lead from the surface of the lunchbox and then a child goes on to eat the fruit.

Kids also put their hands in their mouth, and so that's another vector of contamination.

[Buzz Clik]

15. Thanks. I see that now upon reading the entire article.

Clearly, surface contamination is critical.

I didn't catch what the reported surface contamination (swab/swipe test) was. Was this level reported?

[originalpckelly]

19. They had a bad method:

They kept wiping the same surface area until all the lead was gone, then it sounds like they average the first wipes' results with the later less concentrated wipes results. That created a false low in the data.

However, if they had just done the first wipe and then duplicated that across multiple bags or multiple areas on the surface of the vinyl, then they'd have come up with higher and unsafe levels. That's what was indicated in the story:

"For the swipe tests, the results were lower, especially after the researchers changed their testing protocol. After a handful of tests, they increased the number of times they swiped each bag, again and again on the same spot, resulting in lower average results.

An in-house e-mail from the director of the CPSC's chemistry division explained that they had been retesting with the new protocol "which gave a lower average result than the prior report. ... ," he wrote. "This shows ... that the overall risk is lower than our original testing would have showed, as the amount of lead dislodgeable is mostly taken out with the first wipe and goes down with subsequent wipes.""

[Why Syzygy]

13. They not only didn't do their job ..

they inserted deceit into the project! Losers. Big surprise ala Bushwacked.

[Buzz Clik]

16. I can't understand this. I never have understood this.

Intentionally manipulating the test to falsely report low averages.

So irresponsible.

[madrchsod]

17. protecting big box stores

and their chinese business partners. there is a lot more products from china that contain lead. they just do`t have the time nor resources to find them..

[Norquist Nemesis]

18. "Almost every lunch box ... was made in China."

"Lead is a stabilizing agent in vinyl, but there are other chemicals that can be used instead of lead. Almost every lunch box found with lead in the vinyl lining was made in China.

But they are distributed worldwide. Other information in the documents include an e-mail from Canadian health officials, who found more than 600 parts per million of lead in seven of the 11 lunchboxes they tested.

Allen Blakey, a spokesman for the Vinyl Institute, a trade association representing the leading manufacturers of vinyl, said his organization defers to the regulatory agencies."

Hmmm...made in China. The Vinyl Institute is a US trade organization with an interesting membership list. http://www.vinylinfo.org/links/links.html PETCO???

[In Truth We Trust]

20. Deplorable, criminal, and unconscionable. The Romans eventually figured that problem out but not

these greedy bastards. Someone should do actual time for this! Ain't outsourcing and neglect for greed wonderful!

[intheflow]

21. K&R.

Does this mean the vinyl coolers I've been using for years now probably have lead in them? If so, I have a dilemma - they should be thrown out, but if they go in the trash, that's adding lead to the landfill, which is illegal, I think. :grr: They should be required to buy back every single one of these death boxes they sold.

[lonestarnot]

22. Sons of bitches!

[The Backlash Cometh]

23. This is what the Bush Administration is trying to hide from us.

[knitter4democracy]

24. Okay, so I have to wipe them all down over and over.

Where do I get a lead test like that? I would like to test my kids' lunchbags. I tend to use the insulated bags, so I'd like to test them and see. Then, I should get my kids' lead levels checked too.

There's got to be justice for this kind of crap. We're talking about kids here!

[PinkyisBlue]

25. Well, at least we know why our president is brain-damaged.

He has carried his lunch in a Superman lunchbox for years.

Seriously, why would things like this surprise anyone? Our government has made it clear that corporate profits trump everything else. Deregulation brings problems on multiple fronts, from increased incidence of food poisoning (look at the E. coli outbreaks) to contaminated lunchboxes (and who knows what else is contaminated). Some of the problems from deregulation won't show up for many years. For instance, with less oversight at slaughterhouses, more contaminated meat is entering the market; Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (mad-cow) doesn't show up in humans for 10 or more years. I suspect there will be a large number of human victims in the next 10 to 20 years.

It isn't like this should be a surprise to anyone. People who voted for this administration should have known better.

[area51]

26. nazi party = anti-life

This proves once again that the republinazi party is truly anti-child and anti-life. :grr: