FRN

As if melamine in cat food wasn’t enough. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission issued a recall of wooden Thomas and Friends toy trains that the toymaker’s Chinese manufacturers painted with lead paint despite instructions to the contrary. The New York Times points out that “[u]ntil a few decades ago, lead-painted toys were as American as the Little Dutch Boy, the National Lead Company emblem who cheerfully extolled the virtues of pure lead paints for homes, cars, water tanks and toys.” The U.S. has been trying to get the lead out of virtually everything — paint, gasoline, pipes — but this isn’t the case elsewhere in the world. Via (and see also) Treehugger.