Taking on toys: States are charging ahead with new regulations on children's products even as the president takes action and industry cries foul.

• Author: Boulard, Garry

Hannah Pingree never expected to become a point person in the growing national debate over toxic toys.

As majority leader for the Maine House of Representatives, Pingree has long been interested in environmental and health issues. But then she took part in a study by the Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine and got a surprise.

"We were testing for some 70 or so toxic chemicals that might be in our bodies, including lead, mercury and arsenic," says Pingree, "and what really surprised me was that pretty much everyone in the study had high levels of something and trace levels of everything."

That revelation prompted her to think more seriously about the issue of toxins in toys. China manufactures 80 percent of the toys sold in the United States, and millions of them have turned out to contain chemicals widely thought to be dangerous to children.

"If I as an adult had such traceable levels of toxic chemicals in my body that might come from contact with products containing those chemicals," Pingree says, "what happens when a small child comes in contact with many of those same chemicals, particularly with toys that they inevitably put in their mouths?"

In response, she sponsored a bill, signed into law this spring, that forces manufacturers to disclose any and all toxic chemicals that are in their toys and authorizes the state to require safer alternatives.

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Pingree is not alone. Thirty states have addressed toxins in toys, and more legislation is being considered. State lawmakers are convinced they have to take the lead in addressing the problem, even though a new federal law bans certain toxins and increases money for oversight.

But there is push-back from the industry. U.S. toy manufacturers, many of whom have toys made in Chinese factories, have complained about the patchwork of state laws regulating their industry, while those in the chemical industry complain that much of the legislation is based on incomplete scientific data.

The biggest fear of manufacturers is "having 50 different sets of regulations to abide by," Amy Tucker, president of the Seattle-based toy maker the Matter Group, told the Washington Post.

Robust action by the states, though, is likely to continue, says Mark Schapiro, the author of Exposed." The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power.

"The Maine legislation is one of the most recent examples of not only how both toxic toys have become such an important public issue," he says, "but one more sign that it has been the states that are dealing with this challenge, coming up with the most comprehensive approaches to limiting such products."

He says lax federal enforcement in the last decade has allowed a wide array of products containing dangerous chemicals--including toys, appliances and even food--to enter the country and pose a potential health risk to millions of children and adults.

"Most American assume that we have the strongest protections in the world and the most assiduous enforcement by the federal government to stop dangerous chemicals in products from entering our country," says Schapiro. "That just isn't the case.

"In fact, the European Union has had far more stringent rules governing these chemicals, to the point where there are now factories in China that make toys without chemicals like phthalates and other toxic chemicals just for the European market," he says, "and toys with phthalates and other toxic chemicals just for the American market."

CHEMICAL CONCERNS

Health and child advocates, among others, have long argued that almost any level in a wide array of toxic chemicals now found in imported toys is dangerous. They are concerned that:

* Phthalates, used primarily for softening...