Frustrated Over Lead...AGAIN

This is really getting out of hand! I'm so sick of hearing about lead and other dangers with toys. It's seriously getting to the point where I'm thinking we're just going to have to start carving, whittling, knitting and sewing all Nicky's toys by hand.

If you read that link and follow the links she has you'll find this article about how Fisher Price has recalled a toy in Illinois, but is still selling on it's website! It's a very popular toy too. One I would normally have considered getting for Nicky if he were another year older.

And if you follow the link to this blog and then to the source of that photo you'll see these ducks that Nicky's had since he was born! He's been chewing on those ducks in the bath forever!

Now the really funny thing is we just did some lead testing yesterday. We tested all four pieces of the art deco furniture for Nicky's room. It's really old and we were sure it was lead paint, but nope. It's lead-free! Awesome!

We tested:
his crib since some of the paint is chipping (lead free)
his Elmo phone (lead free)
his "the cow says MOOO" toy (lead free)
the old ceramic tiles in the bathroom (lead free).

And then today I see that his rubber duckies might have lead. (Who knows if they are from the same year/batch as the ones in the photo?)

How the heck are you supposed to trust anything that you don't test yourself? I'm telling you, a good business plan might be to shell out the 50k for an industrial testing device and charge folks to bring their toys to test. Charge 2$ a toy, you'd probably make money on it.

Why isn't that a service we have in our communities?

And more importantly, WHY aren't all toys randomly tested? As I understand it, the FDA randomly tests foods, drugs and cosmetics. Why aren't our toys tested with the same frequency? I keep hearing they have ONE person in charge of safety testing all toys! How is that even possible?