Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Toys and Toxins
This blog I just discovered had an interesting post on it about testing toys for toxins. Check it out! It's an important conversation for all of us to be having. How do we balance all this?
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2 comments:
One potential solution for people who sell on etsy and similar sites (and this can be written into legislation based on the scale of an operation) is to disclose their materials instead of paying to test each item.
This piece of legislation sort of reminds me (in terms of the unanticipated scale of effect) of the safe-haven child abandonment laws that went into effect in Nebraska, allowing people to drop off infants at hospitals (and maybe fire stations?) without being prosecuted, in the interests of preventing infant deaths from exposure to the elements. But they didn't put in an age limit for the kids at first... so for a while people in Nebraska (and neighboring states) were dropping off kids as old as sixteen. Best intentions, and all that. But I think now they've changed the law so the age limit is one month (which is actually much stricter than most states, as I understand it).
Yeah, I'm all for (sensible) regulation that, for example, says you can't use lead paint on a child's toy. But something like this is just a boon for big businesses...
It's just the worst kind of regulation, really. It reduces competition by forcing smaller operations (or individuals) out of business. It's better to test the toys, yes, but there's got to be a better way of doing that...
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