Be on the lookout for a toy that looks like a bus as pictured above. In 2007, they were handed out in Antioch, Bay Point, Concord, Pittsburg, Richmond, San Pablo, Martinez and Brentwood, but may have ended up in Walnut Creek and Lafayette. From an email:
Dear Beyond the Creek,
I would like to alert you to a lead contamination health crisis here in CCC involving toys containing up to 2100 ppm (which is 21 times the current federal limit).
This situation was not reported to the general public here in Contra Costa County, CA, and as the danger remains, I feel the public has a right to be more fully informed about the matter. Moreover, it seems that the agency violated the federal Consumer Product Safety Act, which requires that any distributor of hazardous toys involving a recall is required to immediately report it to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. They admittedly did not do that, nor did they report it to the State of California public health officials, and it’s not confirmed that they actually informed our county’s lead poisoning office, which may be required by law as well.
Read the rest after the jump
The story has been reported at the link below in great detail by a government watchdog website.
http://www.flopped5.org/hot-off-the-press.html
In my opinion, after reading through the documents they present, I feel there is solid evidence that the agency tried to hide it to avoid bad press and that an agency that was supposed to protect kids actively made decisions to avoid their duty to protect kids – to me, it’s really that simple and I feel the documents show that it was conscious negligence.Unfortunately, perhaps because the regional newspaper group can receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising dollars from this agency, and I myself have seen full page ads from this agency in the local paper in the area here, there has been no newspaper or other press coverage of this incident. It is abhorrent to me that our own local paper appears to have no interest in covering what is still a public health crisis/danger, which is why I am reaching out to you.
Due to some persistent efforts by bloggers to get the story out, the agency is now providing additional information in response to the watchdog article at the link below, though it seems to me that it may not be complete information:
http://www.firstfivecc.org/index.php?page=important-tigo-recall
and the agency’s Executive Director attempts to defend their actions here:
http://www.halfwaytoconcord.com/lead-contaminated-toys-for-free-from-contra-costa-first-5/To sum it up, First 5 Contra Costa distributed 6500 lead contaminated toy kits to children throughout the county in 2004. When they found out in 2007 that there was 3.5 times the federal limit for lead in the kit bags (now 21 times the federal limit), they made some effort to recover the kits.
However, they admit they only reached out to a select group of recipients, somehow believing because they had a list of names, that those were the people who did receive them, and it would be adequate to just inform this portion of the public. I disagree – how would they know who really got the kits – did someone give theirs away as a gift to a new parent, and so forth; Contra Costa residents could all have helped at the time.
While First 5 Contra Costa is now stating that they recovered 20% of the 6500 units through a limited campaign, that means that about 5200 toy kits remain unaccounted for. I personally find that highly unacceptable given that they had other reasonable options at hand for addressing the problem and recall rates as high as 60% have been known to be possible by the CPSC.
I am asking that you assist in bring this situation to the general public’s attention.
It concerns me that the agency appears to be framing the exposure as being only to a small number of kids in more impoverished areas, as I feel this may be having the impact they might be desiring: conscious or not, by trying to shut down the dialogue, I feel it smacks of environmental racism, designed to not alarm the affluent. We all have a right to be protected from lead contamination, no matter where we live.
Thank you,
“Concerned Mother”