Product Safety News

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - A toy book that U.S. Public Interest Group discovered contained a dangerous level of lead was recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission on Friday.

The cloth book, “Big Rex and Friends,” (click here to see image of book) was discovered last fall by researchers from U.S. PIRG and IllinoisPIRG as they prepared U.S. PIRG’s November 2009 Trouble in Toyland report.

Suspicious of a red dot appliqué on one of the pages, U.S. PIRG sent the book to an EPA-certified lab for testing.

The lab determined that a red dot had a lead content of 1900 parts per million -- nearly twenty times the content allowed for paint in the 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act and six times the total lead content allowed by the law.

U.S. PIRG then notified the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). After its review, the CPSC announced an official recall.



"We are pleased that the CPSC has taken action to get dangerous products out of kids' hands. Lead is a dangerous neurotoxin that has no business in children's products. Once fully implemented, third party product testing and certification should keep toxic toys out of stores and toy boxes in the first place," said Elizabeth Hitchcock, Public Health Advocate for U.S. PIRG.



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U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups, is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization.

For more on ConnPIRG's Toy Safety campaign, click here.