Monday, January 5, 2009

Pondering

I have noticed lately in the news that there have been quite a few recalls of toys announced in the news. Out of curiosity, I checked the Consumer's Product Safety Commission's (CPSC) web site to see what was on the list. What I found was really pretty quite surprising. Since September 2008, there have been over 20 toy recalls. I noticed a few things while reading through the most recent ones on the list. Out of the 20 I looked at, only one of the toys being recalled had been manufactured in the United States. All the others had been manufactured in a foreign country. Eight of the recalls were for toys that contained lead in the paint and all of those were from foreign countries. So these are the things I am wondering:

1. Does the US have a different standard in place that results in fewer toys being manufactured with lead in the paint or other hazards?

2. How much money are these companies spending/loosing due to recalls? (lost revenue, refunds, law suits, attorney's fees and settlements etc)

3. Wouldn't it have been cheaper in the long run to manufacture those toys here in the US and skip all those headaches?

4. With all the jobs that have been lost due to companies shipping jobs over seas, how much control and over sight do they have as to how their products are being manufactured?

5. Wouldn't our economy improve if we brought those jobs back here to the US?

I really want to know, so if you have any insight or thoughts on this, I would love to hear them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If you are alarmed by the toy recalls, it is informative to read the labels on food, especially frozen fish. If the Chinese standard for toys is set so low as to allow lead paint on toys, and if they allowed milk and baby formula to be diluted with melamine to enhance the protein readings, what are we to think about the food imports or the porcelain glaze on all those cheap mugs labeled "made in China." Is there lead in the porcelain glaze? Curiously they don't label them.