From WSBT.com

In a move that has alarmed the toy industry, lawmakers in the state of Washington have overwhelmingly passed a bill that would set the toughest restrictions in the nation on the lead content of children’s products.

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Recalls

The bill would reduce the allowable level of lead in toys and other goods to 90 parts per million

and possibly as low as 40 parts per million, the recommended limit of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and far below the current federal standard of 600 parts per million. It would also set tough limits on cadmium, a metal used in paints and plastics, and on plastic-softening chemicals called phthalates that have been linked to childhood developmental problems, in some studies.

Some small toy makers say they are planning to stop selling in the state if, as they expect, Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire signs the bill in coming days. The cost of certifying their products as safe under the law, they say, would be prohibitive. The state accounts for about 2 percent of total U.S. toy sales, which last year equaled $23.5 billion in annual revenues.

In a last-ditch effort to stop the measure, representatives of Mattel Inc. and Hasbro Inc., the country’s two biggest toy makers, met with Gov. Gregoire March 17, according to people familiar with the matter. At that meeting, and elsewhere, these people say, Mattel has told Washington officials that half of the products made by its Fisher-Price unit, which specializes in products for preschoolers, would be barred from the state if the law is adopted. The new restrictions would take effect in July 2009.

Mattel didn’t return several calls and emails seeking comment. Hasbro confirmed a meeting with the governor and declined further comment.

The Toy Industry Association, or TIA, which represents more than 75 companies, has said it wouldn’t make economical sense for toy makers, large and small, to ship products to the state if the bill becomes law.

Washington is just one front in a toy-safety battle that has erupted at the statehouse level since Mattel and others withdrew millions of toys to protect children from lead paint and choking hazards this past summer.

The dangers, which can occur when children put toys in their mouths, were generally attributed to Chinese manufacturers hired by the U.S. companies. Last week, the Reebok unit of Adidas AG paid a $1 million penalty as part of a settlement with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for distributing a lead-tainted charm bracelet that was swallowed by a four-year-old boy, who died of lead poisoning.

Congress is considering new federal lead limits and other toy-safety standards but isn’t moving fast enough for sponsors of bills in 29 state legislatures. Illinois and Michigan have already enacted new lead laws, which aren’t as tough as the Washington bill. A ban on phthalates is due to take effect in California next year. The TIA says it has hired lobbyists to battle legislative proposals in 10 states, including Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Many state lawmakers are upset that Congress and federal regulators haven’t done more since the recalls. “If the federal government would do something I would gladly defer to them, but they aren’t, so we have to,” says Illinois Rep. Elaine Nekritz, author of one of two bills that would go beyond the one the state already enacted.

Of the laws under consideration at the state level, 24 regulate lead, 18 cover phthalates, 10 set limits on mercury, and 17 address a variety of other potential toxins. With more state laws possible, makers of toys and other children’s products are afraid that regulatory compliance will turn into a manufacturing nightmare.

“Having different standards for different states is just going to create complete chaos,” says Carter Keithley, the TIA’s president.

Toy makers have generally been reluctant to say how many of their products would fail to meet the Washington bill’s standards. According to lab tests last fall sponsored by more than two dozen consumer groups, 24.8 percent of the 1,200 randomly selected toys sold in the U.S. contained lead in quantities that would exceed the limit in the Washington bill, and 2.9 percent had cadmium above the limits.

Last month, the Washington Toxics Coalition, an environmental advocacy group in Seattle, said it commissioned a test of 20 toys for phthalates and found that nine contained levels exceeding the 1,000 parts per million limit proposed by Washington

the same limit that has been in effect in the European Union since 2005.

A spokeswoman for Target Corp., which had two store-branded toys on the list, says the company intends to abide by the law if it is enacted. She noted that there aren’t any current restrictions against phthalates in the U.S. and added that the retailer plans to phase them out by the fall of this year in its store-branded toys.

Toys “R” Us Inc., the No. 2 toy retailer by revenue, said it is too early to say how the Washington measure would affect its business in the state, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the biggest retailer of toys, didn’t respond to questions.

The state would, among other things, compile a list of “high-priority” chemicals and require companies to file statements annually disclosing the levels of these chemicals in any of their products. That would mean paying for testing that some toy vendors estimate would cost $500 per product, toy makers say.

Mark Chernick, chief executive of Seattle-based Play Visions Inc., a closely held company that makes bathtub toys, puppets and balls, says that would add 5 percent to 10 percent to his overhead

enough to keep him from selling in the state. “That’s basically my profit,” he says. “It’s not worth it.”

Rex Tompkins, a U.S. representative for German toy maker Kaethe Kruse Puppen GmbH says the maker of infant toys, rattles, teeters and dolls, won’t ship products to Washington, either, if the bill becomes law. Neither will Toysmith, an Auburn, Wash., wholesaler and maker of dice, tops, play microscopes and other toys, according to Bill Smith, the company’s chief executive. The company also sells to retailers elsewhere in the U.S., Europe and Japan.

Toy makers also complain about what they see as favored treatment for videogame makers, who received an exemption from the bill. Nintendo Ltd., maker of the Wii videogame, and Microsoft Corp., which makes the Xbox, are both based in Redmond, Wash. Lead is commonly present in electronic-circuit soldering.

“There is an illogic in the legislature’s reasoning,” argues Rick Locker, a lawyer for the TIA, “toys with electronics are dangerous but videogames with the same type of electronics aren’t.”

FromNaturalNews.com

A swirling, floating garbage dump in the North Pacific Ocean twice the size of the United States has been noticed in recent years and is growing at a swift pace. It is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The number of plastic pieces in the Pacific Ocean has tripled in the last ten years and the size of the accumulation is set to double in the next ten unless the use of disposable plastics is reduced.

While this “trash continent” is not thick enough to be walked on, from the ocean surface to a depth of 30 feet, the plastic is floating at a concentration six times that of its neighboring zooplankton, the most abundant animal type of life both by number and total weight. The plastic can reach concentrations of a million pieces per square mile.

Most of this plastic debris originates from land as trash, being swept out by rivers or the tide. About one fifth comes from ships’ cargo and oil platforms. Toothbrushes, cigarette lighters and syringes have accumulated here and everything from Nike sneakers to plastic yellow ducks has been lost from cargo ships.

Due to undesirable wind patterns, most sailors have avoided this area and a natural lack of nutrients in this ocean region has given fishermen reason to look for fish elsewhere. The translucent quality of the plastic just below the water’s surface prevents satellites from detecting it. These two factors have prevented the sheer vastness of the garbage accumulation from being noticed until recently.

This region of the ocean is called the North Pacific Gyre. Warm tropical air descends in a clockwise rotation over this vast area of over 10 million square miles. These wind patterns create comparable ocean currents which circle around a center point between California and Japan. The nature of the North Pacific Gyre has created two garbage patches on either side of the Hawaiian Islands. The Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch is between California and Hawaii and is twice the size of Texas. The Western Pacific Garbage Patch on the other side of Hawaii is smaller, but still massive. The patches are connected by a 6,000 mile long current which itself can accumulate significant amounts of trash.

All debris that comes within this gyre can be caught in the rotation and concentrated toward the center. The result: 100 million tons of plastic circulating in the northern Pacific according to Charles Moore, the American oceanographer who discovered the extent of this accumulation. This is equal to all the plastic produced by the world in one year.

Until recently, debris in this region did not accumulate because it was easily broken down by microorganisms. However, the production of plastics and their prolific distribution across the globe for the last few decades has been the trump card played to the decomposers of the ocean. Unlike wood and cotton, which can be broken down into such things as carbon dioxide and water within months to years, nothing in the ocean can biodegrade plastics.

The plastic from the 1950s that floated out to the ocean is still there in pieces and will be for a long time.

In the sea, forces of the sun, the waves and collisions with other solids break plastics into smaller pieces and eventually into individual molecules, but this is not the same as biodegradation. As the pieces get smaller they are still plastic and become more harmful. They act like sponges for many chemical toxins, such as DDT and PCBs, and concentrate the toxins up to a million times the levels found in the surrounding water. The plastic pieces, whether mistaken for food or so microscopic as to be unavoidable, are consumed by seabirds and fish, which in turn make it to our dinner plates. This can have disastrous consequences for food webs and human health. Many of these chemicals have hormone disrupting properties that affect both animals and humans.

The world produces at least 100 million tons of plastic each year and about ten percent makes it to the oceans. However, the problem lies deeper than just the surface. About 70 percent of plastic products sink to the bottom. Of the 30 percent that floats, most of it aggregates into patches within gyres.

There has been evidence of a high concentration of plastic in at least one of the other four major ocean gyres in the world.

Great quantities of the trash from these garbage patches have washed up on shores, covering beaches in California and especially the islands of Hawaii.

Chris Parry, a public education program manager who works for the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco said, “At this point, cleaning it up isn’t an option. It’s just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues… The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic products at home and change our consumption habits.”

Cleaning up this vast quantity of plastic and garbage would cost billions of dollars. Despite the high price tag, the consequences of creating so much permanent trash should be talked about.

Everyday changes can help to limit the growth of this garbage patch. Reducing your use and purchasing of plastic products will lower the production of plastics. Properly disposing of plastics that you come into contact with will slow their accumulation in the environment.

From WSJ.com

People who have more belly fat during middle age, even those considered to be of normal weight, have higher rates of dementia when they reach old age, according to a study in the journal Neurology. The link highlights a body of work showing that health is affected by not just overall body weight but how the weight is distributed.

Too much abdominal fat, which extends into the body cavity around major organs, is known to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. These new findings, published Wednesday, show that large amounts of belly fat are associated with declining cognitive function as well.

“There is something very potent about collecting fat in your belly,” said Rachel Whitmer, lead study author and a scientist at the research division of Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, Calif.

It is possible the link between belly fat and dementia is better explained by some other factor, such as poor diet, that wasn’t measured in this study, said P. Murali Doraiswamy, an Alzheimer’s researcher and chief of biological psychiatry at Duke University who wasn’t involved with the study.

Using medical records, researchers examined the belly size of 6,583 middle-age people between 1964 and 1973 and then looked to see whether those same individuals were diagnosed with dementia an average of 36 years later.

They found that just being overweight or obese nearly doubles one’s risk of dementia in old age, even after taking into account other risk factors such as diabetes and heart disease.

But having high levels of central-body fat increases the risk more, boosting an obese person’s risk 3.6 times higher than a normal-weight individual with low belly fat. And, as a group, normal-weight individuals with high levels of belly fat showed an elevated risk of dementia.

“It’s really a red flag for all of us boomers,” said Duke’s Dr. Doraiswamy. “Waist size may not be reflective of just your heart health, but your brain function decades later.”

However, Dr. Doraiswamy said there was more variability in the normal-weight group compared with heavier subjects, suggesting that some normal-weight people may be more vulnerable to dementia than others, perhaps due to a genetic predisposition. This study didn’t look at genetic risk, he said.

Why belly fat appears to wreak such havoc on the body isn’t completely understood. Fat is known to produce a variety of potentially harmful substances that cause inflammation, disrupting blood flow to the heart and possibly the brain, which could be one reason for its link to dementia, said Jean-Pierre Despres, director of research at the Quebec Heart Institute at Laval University in Quebec City, who wasn’t involved in the study. More research is needed to figure out the exact mechanisms of action, he and other experts said.

The study wasn’t able to examine whether people who lost weight during the 30-year time period decreased their risk of developing dementia, but it is an area of research interest, said study author Dr. Whitmer.

Much of where an individual accumulates fat is genetically determined, but abdominal fat is easier to lose than fat stored elsewhere. “This is not a stubborn fat,” Dr. Whitmer said. “It is a toxic fat.”