Lead-tainted toys prompt overhaul of U.S. agency

The U.S. Senate could vote as early as Thursday on a bill that will help get lead and other harmful substances out of children's toys.

The legislation would nearly double the Consumer Product Safety Commission's budget to allow for the hiring of more staff.

The measure would also ban lead from children's products and establish a publicly available database of information about toy safety. It would deal with things like injuries, illnesses and deaths from consumer products and would be collected from such sources as hospitals and consumers.

Fisher-Price Inc. and parent company Mattel Inc. decided last summer to recall nearly one million Chinese-made toys sold worldwide over concerns about lead-based paint.

The toys included the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters.

Another U.S.-based firm, RC2 Corp., recalled 1.5 million wooden railroad toys and set parts from its Thomas & Friends Wooden Railway product line last June because the paint used on them contained lead.

A woman in Jacksonville, Ark says such a database about toy mishaps and poisonings would have made treating her son easier after he swallowed part of a Chinese-made toy bead set called Aqua Dots last fall.

Testing showed the beads contained 1,4-butanediol, a potentially harmful chemical that can cause seizures, drowsiness, coma and death.

Shelby Esses of Jacksonville, Ark., says her son Jacob, who was 20 months old last October when he swallowed a handful of the beads, lost consciousness for about six hours. He later recovered.

Officials in the United States, Australia and Canada pulled the product off store shelves last November after at least nine children in the U.S. and three in Australia became sickened after swallowing the beads. No illnesses were reported in Canada.