Question

1.How realistic do you think it is to create a world standard for toys with respect to their safety and use by children? 2.Should we ban products from a country that does not follow standards similar to what the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission suggests for the United States? Is the CPSC overprotective? Should each country have its own guidelines? Why or why not? 3.If there are health risks associated with lead poisoning, what about related areas such as lead in drinking water (e.g., the issue that came to the forefront in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign regarding water supply in Flint, Michigan)? 4.Is lead in toys a financial, or cost, issue? Why have we not seen the toy industry monitor and do something about the lead problem, even though we have known about it for more than 30 years? Refer http://www.chegg.com/homework-help/questions-and-answers/toys-children-made-numerous-countries-exported-buyers-throughout-world-countries-united-st-q26479059

Answer 1

1. Though it seems very difficult to create world standard for toys, considering the health hazards that heavy metals like lead can cause to children, it looks pertinent to take serious steps in this direction. Metals like Lead is poisonous and can cause harm to the nervous system and also cause serious brain disorders. Lead has chemical composition and properties that causes the accumulation of this metal in the body that can cause serious problems to the health. Hence considering the threat caused by these metals, it would be in good fortune to make this goal realistic.

2. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has established guidelines which every manufacturer, producing toys has to follow. These guidelines have been well drafted considering the hazardous impacts of that metals like lead can cause to the health of the children. Hence it is in the best interest of the children to stay away from playing with the toys violating the health standards. Thus the US should ban the domestic production as well as imports of sub-standard quality products.

3. Considering the impacts of the heavy metals like lead to children health, as founded by the Greenpeace and IPEN, along with many other regulatory bodies and scientific community, the stricter norms set up by the CPSC seems to be fair enough. Every country should have their different safety standards, both for domestic production as well as for import of these products, but the standards should at least adhere to a certain benchmark of safety and security as recommended by some unbiased international bodies.

Young children are most vulnerable to the toxic effects of lead. As lead has been a common metal used in toy manufacturing and an ingredient of paint, children are most exposed to lead-related health hazards. Lead is dangerous to the nervous system of humans, particularly the brain, and can cause permanent health effects. It also caused harm to kidney damage and high blood pressure. Maximum contamination level of lead in drinking water is set to zero as it is persistent and accumulated in the body. Plastic toys when exposed to heat also due to chemical decomposition release health dust which can enter through respiratory system causing harm to body.

4. The reluctance to monitor and take steps to make safe toys on the part of toys industry is due to the cost issues. The cost of paint without lead is approximately three times higher than that of paint containing lead. The issue has not been tackled yet because all paint have lead in them, though some have low-level concentration while some have a very high level of lead. Hence all manufacturer know what is going in the industry but due to cost-cutting measures none is taking any step in the required direction.

The issue of having lead in toys is more of a cost issue for factories or manufacturers because paint that has lead normally sells for a third of the cost with paint that has low levels of lead that is why most of them opt for paint with lead especially for Chinese toy manufacturers.
The reason why the issue of lead in toys has not been tackled is because almost all paints have lead in them. The only difference is some paints have higher levels while some low levels this therefore means that almost all stakeholders in the toy industry are responsible and know what is going on.