So imagine tucking your kids into bed, handing them their favourite stuffed toy to hold whilst they drift off into a nice warm sleep. However, it isn’t just a cute toy that they are hugging onto, it’s really a potential death trap containing toxic asbestos wadding in their favourite teddy bear that they are snuggling, and you’re the one that handed it to them! Taking a deeper meaning to kids ‘playing with their lives’ is really not what any of us would wish for?
These toys often receive very rough treatment and handling, ripping apart at the seams and stitches sometimes within weeks or days of usage. They’re also considered to be some of the closest companions a small child can have, usually accompanying them everywhere and becoming their first and foremost sleeping buddy to cuddle up to. Extended exposure to damaged toys leaking their Asbestos stuffing could easily occur over time and the deadly fibres would most certainly become airborne and be breathed in.
Okay, enough with the theatrical scare tactics, but where children are concerned our sense of panic and worry will justly rise. Why would we wish to put such a harmful product known to take tens of thousands of lives a year worldwide inside of something loved by our children?
Well, Asbestos can be soft… so I guess it makes sense (sort of), but it is also extremely dangerous if we are exposed to it and has the potential to cause lung disease and cancer many years later. So it is hard to grasp as to why we would let our kids get a hold of this stuff, mostly it is unknowingly on our part and when we consider that it wasn’t until we reached a new Millennium that we addressed the true concerns with the substance, it is still surprising that it has been incorporated into the manufacturing of stuffed animal toys. There have been various other toys that have been found to contain asbestos, would you believe asbestos was even found in crayon sets… and we all know how we all loved our crayons as kids! Not only this but they have also been found in several ranges of children’s crime scene fingerprint kits.
Even to this day one can find several of these playful time bombs being produced and sold around the world, a simple Google search would show you that it’s still happening. All of these products being made in countries where asbestos has not yet been banned and then being transported around the world and we should consider that these products could easily find their way to the UK, either directly or through EU and other countries as well.
A number of large retailers around the world, including; Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Macy’s and Costco, have been supplied products that have subsequently been shown to contain asbestos. Some of these products may only contain a small percentage of Asbestos, ranging from 1-5%; however any amount is still considered to be very harmful and if one is exposed, has the potential to cause cancers later in our lives.
So whilst Asbestos may not be something we think we come across everyday, if at all; it might still be lurking somewhere much closer than we imagine.
For more information and if you wish to find out which of the products that contained the harmful substance within it, then please feel free to click the links within this article and below to read on.
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Asbestos-turns-up-in-toys-children-s-clay-1257038.php
http://asbestosglobal.org/asbestos-in-toys/
http://www.asbestosnation.org/facts/tests-find-asbestos-in-kids-crayons-crime-scene-kits/
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