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Eco-friendly, non-toxic toys for kids
Sydney Scott, whose parents own Willow Glen’s Treehouse in the Glen, finds the fun in natural toys.
Photograph by Lane Johnson
Would you willingly give your child a lead lollipop with PVC coating as a treat? If you haven’t investigated what materials make up the toys scattered around your home, you might have inadvertently done something similar.
Believe it or not, the toy industry is highly unregulated. Thanks to what many consumer advocates consider an obsolete law known as the Toxic Substances Control Act—originally approved in 1976 to regulate chemicals in consumer products—many unscrupulous toy manufacturers are able to sell toys containing materials that can be toxic to children and the environment.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that the majority of chemicals used in consumer products, including children’s toys, have not been tested to gauge their effects on health or the environment. In fact, according to The Ecology Center, a Michigan-based non-profit that issues an annual report on harmful chemicals in toys, only 200 of the approximately 80,000 chemicals that are currently used to manufacture consumer products have been tested for their long-term effects.
But Stacy Scott who, along with her husband, Dan, owns the toy store Treehouse in the Glen in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood, says parents today have many options in environmentally conscious, non-toxic toys. Her store specializes in toys made locally, whenever possible, and of natural materials.
“We believe natural materials are safer than materials that are synthesized,” she said. “It’s our responsibility, I think, as parents to make sure our children’s environment is as low-toxin as possible,” she said.
Potentially harmful toys are certainly common. A 2009 study conducted by HealthyStuff.org, a project of The Ecology Center, found that 32 percent of the toys the group’s researchers tested contained one or more of these harmful chemicals: lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury. Not only can these chemicals work their way in to children’s bodies when toys are handled and/or chewed, they can also leak contaminating chemicals into water supplies long after the toys have been disposed of.
The good news is that more and more manufacturers are committed to providing children with toys that are toxin-free and eco-friendly. This means they contain no harmful chemicals and are manufactured out of sustainable resources such as organic cotton, rubberwood, bamboo, and other types of renewable wood products.
Vania Hendratna founded Babycoo, an online retailer of eco-friendly baby clothes and products with a brick-and-mortar shop in Los Gatos, after a career as a food scientist. After her daughter was born, Hendratna said, she began to wonder about all the baby products: “How do they make this and what do they put into it?” By offering customers non-toxic products such as organic cotton soft toys, she said, “Parents have peace of mind knowing (children) are chewing on something that’s okay to chew on.”
Many parents avoid plastic toys because of the potential health hazards posed by PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, a common ingredient in plastic. More than 42 percent of plastic toys tested by HealthyStuff in 2009 contained PVC. The material “creates major hazards in its manufacture, product life, and disposal and can contain additives that are dangerous to human health,” according to the group’s most recent report on the chemical safety of toys.
Lead and phthalates, which are used to increase the flexibility of plastic and have been linked to hormonal disruption leading to the onset of early puberty, are also widespread in plastic toys. State and federal bans on the sale of toys made with phthalates have been enacted in recent years, reducing the chance that parents will unknowingly buy new toys containing phthalates.
Julia Chen, owner of The Playstore in Palo Alto, recommends parents choose toys made of “tried and true” materials such as wood and natural rubber. “These are things that have been in use for generations and have not been harmful to human beings,” she said.
For more information HealthyStuff.org has tested more than 5,000 products and has rating lists categorized by which chemicals were detected, “levels of concern” about chemicals present, toy type, and brand.
Other websites offering information about eco-friendly and non-toxic toys include babycoo.com (Los Gatos baby boutique), greentoys.com (San Francisco toy manufacturer), playstoretoys.com (Palo Alto toy store), and treehouseintheglen.com.
