Ban on lead in toys

The US lawmakers have passed a bill this week to ban the use of lead in manufacturing toys.  Read the full news here.

It’s horrifying how much chemicals we come into contact with everyday.  Initially it was the air and environment, then people started raising issues with the artificially enhanced food that we eat everyday.  Now even toys are tainted with harmful lead on them during manufacturing.  We are getting more and more exposed to such harmful substances each day and we are even starting our kids’ exposure at younger ages.  How depressing.

Some years ago when I started collecting X-Men action figures, those early plastic toys (by ToyBiz) based on the X-Men Animated series did not smell anything peculiar.  Then gradually, the later batches of action figures, especially those with sculpting that were half or fully-manga influenced, began to smell like ‘rotting rubber’ whenever I took them out of their packaging.  I remember having to air them in the open for up to a week before I could keep them away in storage.  If not, some of them might even start to have liquid-like substances ‘oozing’ from their surfaces if the toys had been keep in air-tight or concealed conditions for too long.

That was one major reason why I stopped collecting those action figures.  Another reason was because I disliked the manga sculpting look on them.  As they became more multi-articulated at all possible movable joints on their limbs and bodies, more than half of them ended up looking ‘hunch-backed’ as they ’struggled’ to stand on their 2 feet without toppling over due to ‘loose’ joints, or joints that were not even ’strong’ enough to support their basic standing pose.  And of course they smelled horrible too, hence it became frustrating to collect them. 

Maybe that was a a sort of blessing in disguise as I did not have to breathe in those chemical ’scents’ anymore.  If you buy action figures for your kids, or if you are toy collector; remember to air those newly-out-of-package toys for at least a few days before playing with them or putting them away from storage.  I notice that the soft plastic toys (those ‘rubbery’ plastic ones that you can easily bend with your hands) tend to ’smell’ more than the hard plastic ones (those that are too hard to bend easily with your hands). 

These are just my observations.  Feel free to share yours!