Add Thomas & Friends to the List of Toxic Chinese Products

RC2 Corp., which sells Thomas the Tank Engine toys, is recalling over 1.5 million Thomas & Friends wooden railway vehicles and accessories because their surface paint contains lead. This is a massive recall; it's about 4 percent of all the trains RC2 has sold in the United States. I can personally confirm this, my son had fourteen of the items on the list. Get the return form here.

The U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) report states that the toys were manufactured in China. Now, I don't want to nip and prod but my kid, your kid, played with those trains. And, barring readers who just woke from a coma (congrats, by the way), it's not news that lead paint has been banned in the US for almost 30 years. Did that message not percolate across the Pacific? Guess not, because China was held accountable for 65 percent of all the recalled products in this US this year, with lead being named as a recurring cause among the recalls.

Some say that when a country has 800 million people employed in a manufacturing economy, it will just take some time to correct these issues. Cough, cough; in the case of lead, you have had 30 years. Truth is, these are simply bad faith manufacturing practices and the list is endless - the one million recalled Easy-Bake Ovens, the deadly vinyl lunch boxes, the melamine pet food, the Chinese cold medicine that killed 51 Panamanians, the toothpaste that contains anti-freeze, the soy sauce made out of hair. Here's one word for you - 近义词. :: ABC

I Am An American Harper's Reader

Harper's is turning out some great text recently on what it means to use technology. After reading I was a Chinese Internet Addict I ran out and bought a subscription.

The article provides a look under covers as to how others societies use the Internet. And in China, the 'net is all about obsessive release with dizzying consequences; four day jags on the computer, the guy whose back was fused into a 90 degree angle from sitting too long, the teenager that hunted down and murdered a kid who stole his virtual weapon. It is stuff like this that will scare the hell out of you.

There are smaller clues as well, like the fact that the teenage boys in the clinic (where the author is being treated) can't play team sports - no skills and no interest. I actually cut my 4 year old's time on the computer after reading this article. Follow this up with the June edition which has an Endgame analysis of the environmental situation and you will be hooked.