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No child s play

No child s play it is christmas time and Santa Claus is finally seeing red. But it is not due to his clothes, because what he is wearing is green and his agenda is to raid toy shops to rid them of toxic toys. The beneficiaries of this drive will be three-year-old children who risk damaging their health because of soft pvc (polyvinyl chloride) Winnie the Poohs and Ernie's rubber duckies. Santa Claus led a Greenpeace activists' protest at the site of a Toronto Toys "R" Us store urging the company to "stop selling toxic toys".

Interestingly, all Toys "r" Us stores in Denmark, Holland and Belgium have withdrawn these toys meant for children under three from sale, while Canadian stores are still selling these toys.

Cute little toys are bad for cute little babies and Greenpeace activists are driving the point home in an effort to bring about a safer Christmas for children this year.

In September, Greenpeace released analyses of soft vinyl toys and found that 71 toys from 17 countries around the world contained 10 to 40 per cent by weight of hazardous chemicals (softeners called phthalates). Further tests conducted by independent laboratories in the us found that many soft vinyl children's products contain high levels of the hazardous metals, lead and cadmium. The dominant softener found in the toys tested by Greenpeace has been shown in previous studies to be toxic when injested by animals. Effects ranging from liver and kidney damage to reproductive abnormalities were identified.

Another recent study also indicates that the most abundant phthalate found in the Greenpeace analyses shows some capacity to weakly mimic the hormone estrogen.

"The toy industry including the retailers and manufacturers must take responsibility to protect children. Greenpeace demands that soft vinyl toys be withdrawn from sale imme-diately," said Lisa Finaldi of Green-peace. While most toy stores in Denmark, Holland and Belgium have withdrawn soft pvc toys from sale, the shops in Toronto are loaded with pvc toys. Greenpeace activists demonstrated with signs reading play safe : buy pvc free. The activists confronted the Toys "R" Us store managers to follow the example of European countries who have acted to prevent unnecessary and unwarranted exposure of babies to chemicals used in pvc toys.

In an interview to Denmark's leading newspaper, Politiken, the director of Toys "R" Us has confirmed that the retail chain has removed all pvc toys from shops in Europe and Asia. Recently, four countries have urged the toy industry to take action against soft vinyl, chewable baby toys. -Between April and October, the Danish, Dutch, Belgian and the Philippine governments warned toy retailers, distributors and manufacturers of the potential hazards of soft vinyl toys which can leach hazardous softeners when sucked or chewed.

In October, North Carolina's Department of Environment and Natural Resources' Children Environ-mental Health Branch sent a letter to the us Consumer Safety Product Commission, urging its chairperson Ann Brown to further investigate the potential hazards posed by vinyl toys and children's products. The entire life-cycle of pvc plastic is a polluting process. Its production involves highly toxic additives and generates hazardous chlorinated emissions and wastes. When burned in accidental fires or incinerators, pvc products are a significant source of dioxin.

-A number of European retail chains have stopped selling soft pvc toys. These include fdb and Bilka in Denmark and kf in Sweden. A major Dutch retailer Blodder has said that all future orders for toys under three must specify that it contains no pvc. Another Dutch retailer de Bijenkorf has removed all pvc toys from its shelves.

Santa said, "I checked my list and found plenty of hazardous vinyl toys on it. You can't keep selling vinyl toys, they're most harmful for children." "Kids in America deserve the same margin of safety as kids in Europe. Toys "R" Us must develop an international policy to get rid of soft vinyl toys," he added.

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