Editorial: Trailing a tainted train

Thursday, June 21, 2007 | 7:19 a.m.

T homas & Friends train sets are the kind of toys that parents trust. Through books and a popular public television series, Thomas teaches time-honored lessons about friendship and teamwork.

But Thomas is in trouble. Federal officials recalled 1.5 million Thomas & Friends train sets last week because they were coated with lead paint at a factory in China. Lead paint damages brain cells.

Stories by The New York Times this week show that the trains and 23 other types of toys that federal officials have recalled this year were manufactured in China. These toys include drums and bears also coated with lead paint and a fake eyeball that was filled with kerosene.

Consumer Product Safety Commission figures show that the number of recalled products made in China has doubled since 2002, the Times reports. China is the source of 60 percent of all products recalled in the United States.

The news that toys manufactured in China pose significant health risks to America's children comes on the heels of a massive U.S. recall of pet foods, which turned out to be tainted with a chemical ingredient imported from China. The tainted foods are suspected of sickening or killing thousands of pets since February.

And in an alarming report published Sunday, the Times told of a decade-old U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigation that showed dozens of children in Haiti died after taking fever medicine that had been manufactured in China and contained diethylene glycerin, a poison sometimes used in antifreeze. The Chinese plant that manufactured the medicine was shut down before the FDA could finish its investigation.

But 10 years later the United States still is importing products from China that, evidently, still carry significant health risks.

What will it take to force our federal government to seriously address the problem of tainted foreign imports and devise a comprehensive method to screen such items?