Toxic Toys: Hazardous Toys for Children Still on the Market

Parents today have and arsenal of plastic products for their babies. Teething rings, rubber ducks, bottles, and all shapes and sizes of plastic toys litter a child's landscape. They are convenient, colorful, and fairly inexpensive. Children love them and these toys often give parents a much needed few minutes rest from the intensity of occupying a child's time.

But the convenience and colorful shapes come at a high price. The polyvinyl chloride or vinyl that so many of these toys are made of frequently contains toxic additives that have been linked in animal studies to a variety of illnesses, including reproductive damage and damage to the kidneys and liver.

Some parents may have sick children because of these toxic substances and few will ever make the connection. Much has been said about this issue, but toxic toys still abound.

Most of us cannot imagine life without plastic. Such products are everywhere from the ubiquitous water bottle carried by millions of people around the world every day to the food containers that contain the lunch we bring to work. Our computers, televisions, VCRs, CD players, and cars are filled with millions of tons of plastic. But now that you think about it, is it any surprise that there is a price to pay for surrounding ourselves with these complex, unnatural chemical products?

The production of plastic begins with crude oil and natural gas. The components of these fossil fuels are heated, resulting in their conversion into hydrocarbons such as ethylene and propylene. Further processing creates styrene, vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol, terephthalic acid and many others. These molecules are then chemically bonded into chains known as polymers. These polymers and their many combinations produce the abundance of plastic forms we have today.

Plastics are made up of many toxic chemicals that cause great harm if ingested by animals or humans. If these chemicals stayed bound in the plastic, then workers in plastic factories would have to take precautions, but there wouldn't be a health issue to the consumer.