SpongeBob SoiledPants
From the Miami Herald...
Only two weeks after Mattel's major recall of lead-painted toys, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced the recall of about 338,000 Chinese-made lead-tainted toys and jewelry items. Lead is highly toxic, especially to children, who don't have fully developed nervous systems. Here are the recall details:
About 250,000 SpongeBob SquarePants address books and journals, imported by Martin Designs of Ashland, Ohio, and sold nationwide from June 2006 through July 2007 for about $2. The covers show a SpongeBob SquarePants character on the front and have a black metal spiral binding. The UPC numbers (80773007505 for the address book and 80773002260 for the journal) are printed on the back covers.
What?!? You mean having a wide open trade agreement with a nation that gets it's work force from people enslaved because they either protested the government or dared to practice their religion, actually results in our markets being flooded with products below our own health standards!? Who'da thunk.
Y'know it's kind of like complaining because the watch you bought from the sleazy guy standing on the street corner stopped working.
Get a clue. You sleep with dog, you're gonna get up with fleas.
Posted by Danny Carlton at August 23, 2007 7:47 AM
thats so true. Just wait till WWIII at war with china... and all our s*** is made in china...
It is somewhat important to note that some of the lead that has been surfacing in China and eventually their exports is a result of our dumping trash electronic devices there (lead is found in the electrical solder and isn't properly removed when recycling). Its like a toxic game of ping-pong and we lost the volley this round. http://www.ban.org/ban_news/2007/070711_toxic_jewelry_imports.html
The World Trade Organization actually prevents us from discriminating against another member country's trade products on the basis of production means. So we have that "open trade agreement" with many more countries than China. I seriously doubt that the American public wants to pay the price of goods that are produced in a fair and ethical manner. Current sniveling about gas prices is a testament to the fact that Americans refuse to pay the actual cost of a product with its associated externalities factored in.
Just important to note in a sort of "let he without sin cast the first stone" way. Maybe we as consumers should bare a certain degree of responsibility for the products we buy and be prepared to incur the added cost of a product that might be safe for our children. I'm not attempting to justify the actions of China for not having better quality control standards, but they didn't exactly shove the products into our shopping carts.