The "Made in China" Poisoning Continues - This Time Its Our Kids

Every couple of weeks we seem to be getting a new story of some product made cheaply in China (so as to increase the profits of Multi-National corporations) that has been dispersed widely in America that puts our health and safety at risk. Most notorious may be the tainted pet food that has killed and sickened many of our cats and dogs.

That pales in comparison by the latest scandal - the lead poisoning of our children. It turns out one of our biggest toy manufacturers - Mattel/Fisher Price - has been using a Chinese contractor to put decorative paint on their toys and that contractor used lead based paint.

A recall of a million toys sold between May and August 2007 is underway. But listen to this:

Fisher-Price and the government had wanted to withhold details of the recall from the public until Thursday to give stores time to get suspect toys off the shelves and Fisher-Price time to get its recall hotline running, but some news organizations broke the embargo and posted news of the recall online.

I'm pissed. I'm fucking pissed. My son just had his second birthday and got one of these toys as a gift. He has been playing with it for 4 days now and these motherfuckers, with the government's acquiescence, wanted to delay the public notice to get their PR operation in place. How long have they known? How many kids - and these are toys largely sold for babies and toddlers - put these fucking things in their mouth as they plotted their PR strategies? Where was our government in protecting our kids from this danger? Don't we now have to go back and test all of the toys Mattel/Fisher Price sold us over the past few years?

Here's a list of the tainted toys. And looking at the list, I'm willing to bet that the estimate of a million with only a third of those getting to the public is way low.