It doesn't end: Some bibs made in China contain lead

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — Certain vinyl baby bibs sold at Toys “R” Us stores appear to be contaminated with lead, laboratory tests have shown, making the inexpensive bibs another example of a made-in-China product that may be a health hazard to children.
The vinyl bibs, which feature illustrations of baseball bats and soccer balls and Disney’s Winnie the Pooh characters, are sold for less than $5 each under store brand labels, including Especially for Baby and Koala Baby.
Tests this summer, financed by the Center for Environmental Health of Oakland, Calif., found lead as high as three times the level allowed in paint in several styles of the bibs purchased from both Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us stores in California.
A separate test by a laboratory hired by The New York Times of the same Toys “R” Us bibs, purchased in Maryland, found a similar level of contamination.
“These bibs are exposing children to lead in an unnecessary way,” said Caroline Cox, research director at the Center for Environmental Health, a nonprofit agency that for the last decade has been testing consumer products for lead, in an effort to remove them from the market.
Kathleen Waugh, a Toys “R” Us spokeswoman, said that the company had hired an independent lab to do tests on the bibs as recently as May and they were found to be in compliance with safety standards for lead levels. Any test showing that individual bibs were potentially contaminated should not be interpreted as meaning the problem is widespread, she said, adding that the company’s own tests are more stringent than federal standards. “Our uncompromising commitment to safety has been, and continues to be, our highest priority,” she said in a written statement.
Officials from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates children’s products, said that they would prefer that there be no elevated levels of lead in bibs.
But their own recent tests of baby bibs on the market in the United States found that the lead, when present, was at levels low enough that a child chewing on or rubbing the bib would not get an unhealthy dose.
As a result, the agency urges parents to discard vinyl bibs only if they are ripped or otherwise deteriorated.
“There is a potential risk of lead exposure from babies swallowing pieces of cracked vinyl on used bibs,” the agency said in a statement, after being presented with the test results on the Toys “R” Us bibs.
But agency officials have not pushed for a recall of lead-contaminated bibs, including a brand sold earlier this year at Wal-Mart Stores, which the Center for Environmental Health also identified. Wal-Mart removed the bibs from its store shelves nationwide, but in Illinois, where 60,000 of the bibs had been sold, a strict lead law required their recall.
The bibs were imported for Toys “R” Us by Hamco Baby Products, the same company that made the bibs for Wal-Mart. The bibs will be retested, Ms. Waugh, the Toys “R” Us spokeswoman, said.

Read the article in the NewYorkTimes.