I bet I licked little lead toys in 1956-?

[babylonsister]

Everything was made elsewhere then, too. I remember the 'Made In Japan' or 'Made in China' or 'Made somewhere else other than here' for longtime.

[napi21]

1. I think we all did. I had an edge on you. I was licking them from

1943! I think the problem occur rs when kids chewed on them a lot and ingested a lot of the paint. Licking isn't going to be a problem.

That reminds me of the stories back when they first outlawed lead paints. Kids were chewing on windowsills! I never quite understood that. Still don't.

My kids chewed on plastic toys like rattles. Certainly not the windowsills!

[Luminous Animal]

9. More than just chewing.

Chipped lead paint and lead dust is a problem. Lead in the soil from deteriorated exterior paint is also a problem.

My sister's kids were exposed to lead (resulting in elevated levels) from their claw tooth bathtub.

Lead exposure is a serious problem and it took decades of activism for the government to address it.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. The smell of the paint was attractive to kids

I remember getting attracted to the smell of fresh, lead-based paint when I was 4, sticking my fingers in it and then sucking on my fingers. I almost had to get my stomach pumped out for that little episode.

[tularetom]

2. I even made lead soldiers in the 40's - 50's

in a little oven thingy with molds just like making fishing sinkers. When we were kids we chewed on everything and the lead was soft. But I'll be 66 years old next month so I'm not particularly worried about what that lead did to me.

And we did not even need China to screw us up. All this crap was made right here in the good ol US of A.

[Elwood P Dowd]

3. That's not true. Made in Japan didn't show up until the 1960s.

We had no current account deficit of any consequence back in those days. Almost everything I purchased in the 50s and 60s was made in America. I still own radios, blenders, amplifier, microwave, tools, turntable, cooking utensils, my old US ARMY field jacket and fatigues, and many other items made in the USA during the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Almost all of my clothing purchased up until the 1980s was Made In The USA. I still own some Converse All Star tennis shoes made in the USA during the 1990s.

[zalinda]

12. Yes, and I remember that when something was made

in Japan, you avoided it like the plague, because it was cheaply made. I just got a second Hoover washing machine from the 70's I thing (it's avocado), now all I have to do is find the proper belts and it will be humming along.

zalinda

[ComerPerro]

14. Back to the Future

"No wonder this thing doesn't work, it was made in Japan"

"Doc, all the best stuff is made in Japan"

[Elwood P Dowd]

18. My sister is still using a Maytag washer and dryer manufactured in 1968

in the USA. She has replaced the dryer belts a couple of times and replaced a motor on the washer. The 1964 USA-made radio I used in college is still working in my bathroom. I continue to use old products from Maytag, Zenith, Oster, KitchenAid, Amana, Klipsch, Sears, Drake, GE, and they still work. My 88-year-old mother will not part with her 1970s USA-made stereo.

[Art_from_Ark]

15. My grandmother had some figurines she bought in the '50s

that were made in Japan. Japanese imports started coming into the US in the late '40s as a way of helping the Japanese rebuild and develop a peacetime economy. The early post-war imports from Japan were mostly trinkets and kitschy home decorations, as well as traditional Japanese products like lacquerware.

[RB TexLa]

24. Be gone with you! Mentioning the idea of helping someone else through trade.

Best get your flame suit on.

[Elwood P Dowd]

30. And the resident DUer who worships and praises outsourcing and fake free trade

deals is back on board. You absolutely love it when US jobs are shipped out of the country. Does it get you off or something?

[RB TexLa]

31. So after WWII we should have isolated Japan?

:shrug:

Oh, wait, of course we should have, they were "stealing 'Merican jobs."

[Name removed]

34. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RB TexLa]

38. I don't hate anyone. Usually it is conservatives screaming about foreigners stealing jobs.

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Elwood P Dowd]

28. I'm not talking about a few trinkets here and there.

Significant Japanese imports didn't start until the 1960s. Much of it was electronics from companies such as Sansui, Pioneer, Teac, Sony, and others in the 1960s. There were also cameras and cars. Many American companies were put out of business because of the cheaper imports, and that was especially true in consumer electronics. Old American companies such as Fisher, Scott, Dynaco, Pilot, and Harman Kardon died, went out of business, and the name purchased by the Japanese companies. When you compare the sound quality and longevity of the old Fishers and Scotts, they absolutely stomp the Pioneer and Sansui components, yet the $50.00 to $100.00 or so in savings forced the US companies out of business. An old Fisher model 500 receiver from the 1960s brings over $400.00 on eBay. An old Pioneer SX-626 will not bring $75.00. There is a reason.

[Art_from_Ark]

32. Japan also filled niches that weren't being filled by American companies

I don't believe that an American company ever commercialized an American-made pocket transistor radio, for example. Japanese cars were mostly shunned until the oil shocks of the '70s, when American makers were still focusing on producing gas guzzlers while the Japanese had had to deal with limited gasoline availability throughout the early post-war era and had designed their domestic cars accordingly. And much of the Japanese price advantage in the early days was the result of American policy of keeping the yen pegged at a rate of 360 to the US dollar (for comparison, it's 113 yen to the dollar today, and might be 112 tomorrow).

[stimbox]

29. "Made in Occupied Japan"

My Mom has a few that had "Made in Occupied Japan" painted on them.

[RaleighNCDUer]

55. Some of those things are probably worth quite a bit now as collectibles. nt

[Canuckistanian]

42. We certainly had "Made in Japan" stuff in the '50s

Even as far back as the early 50's, my mom had some dinnerware that said "Made in Occupied Japan".

And I remember cheap knock-offs of things like binoculars or radios that had to have been bought in the late 50's.

[Elwood P Dowd]

46. Read my post above. It was insignificant until the 1960s

and had a minuscule effect on GDP and American jobs. It was nothing remotely similar to what has been happening since the 1980s. We were not shipping tens of millions of jobs out of the country so CEOs and wealthy investors could get rich at the expense of American workers.

[Liberal In Texas]

4. I used to play with asbestos and mercury.

I don't have lung cancer (asbestoses) from inhaling it, but I have seen the results having been involved recording many depositions with the victims that did. The results don't show up for decades.

Lead may or may not have inhibited your mental capacity. It usually only affects those with a lot of ingestion. Radiation from watches (radium) and other "benign" sources may not show up for decades. Like the asbestos victims. Those X-rays in the shoe store. NBD? Who knows? The cumulative exposure to these chemicals/elements/radiation may never effect you. Or it may show up decades later.

Certain people have a disposition or perhaps a lower tolerance to cancer and other nasty diseases. It's why some people can smoke all their life and never get lung cancer. While some can get it if they're only exposure is radon in the basement.

Your lead toys, and mine, may not have had any noticeable effect on us. At least that's what we believe.

Me? I distill all the water I drink, and don't fool around with mercury anymore.

[RaleighNCDUer]

16. Hey, me too! When I was a kid, if we ever broke a thermometer

Mom & Dad would let us play with the mercury. I loved the way it would bead up and roll around in my hand, and...uh...

What was I talking about?

[Sparkly]

19. Me too!!

And, our walls had peeling paint... I don't want to know how I know what dry paint tastes like, but I do... :scared:

[Liberal In Texas]

20. They used to give it to us in vials in school. Pour it out and play with it, much of it of course

would end up lost on the floor.

A little while back I read where some thermometer or something broke in a school lab and they evacuated the students and called in a Haz-Mat team to clean the school. It took like a week.

How times have changed.

[Liberal_in_LA]

53. Me three! n/t

[Kingshakabobo]

35. Here's an interesting article regarding the "Radium Girls."

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=660

Undark and the Radium Girls


In 1922, a bank teller named Grace Fryer became concerned when her teeth began to loosen and fall out for no discernible reason. Her troubles were compounded when her jaw became swollen and inflamed, so she sought the assistance of a doctor in diagnosing the inexplicable symptoms. Using a primitive X-ray machine, the physician discovered serious bone decay, the likes of which he had never seen. Her jawbone was honeycombed with small holes, in a random pattern reminiscent of moth-eaten fabric.

As a series of doctors attempted to solve Grace's mysterious ailment, similar cases began to appear throughout her hometown of New Jersey. One dentist in particular took notice of the unusually high number of deteriorated jawbones among local women, and it took very little investigation to discover a common thread; all of the women had been employed by the same watch-painting factory at one time or another.

In 1902, twenty years prior to Grace's mysterious ailment, inventor William J. Hammer left Paris with a curious souvenir. The famous scientists Pierre and Marie Curie had provided him with some samples of their radium salt crystals. Radioactivity was somewhat new to science, so its properties and dangers were not well understood; but the radium's slight blue-green glow and natural warmth indicated that it was clearly a fascinating material. Hammer went on to combine his radium salt with glue and a compound called zinc sulfide which glowed in the presence of radiation. The result was glow-in-the-dark paint.

Hammer's recipe was used by the US Radium Corporation during the First World War to produce Undark, a high-tech paint which allowed America's infantrymen to read their wristwatches and instrument panels at night. They also marketed the pigment for non-military products such as house numbers, pistol sights, light switch plates, and glowing eyes for toy dolls. By this time the dangers of radium were better understood, but US Radium assured the public that their paint used the radioactive element in "such minute quantities that it is absolutely harmless." While this was true of the products themselves, the amount of radium present in the dial-painting factory was much more dangerous, unbeknownst to the workers there.

more at the link....

[cherokeeprogressive]

39. Me too. We had a science kit in elementary school in the 60's

that had a bottle that had to be at LEAST pint-size, filled with mercury. I remember pouring it in each other's hands and marveling at the weight. When we spilled some, it was like little ball bearings, and we'd scoop it up with a piece of paper and put it back in the bottle. My teacher never knew.

[Canuckistanian]

44. Oh yeah? Well I used to play with plutonium and arsenic

Used to eat it as a snack. Kind of a tingly feeling in your throat.

Didn't do me no harm.

[LittleClarkie]

5. Well that certainly explains things

I keed! I keed!

[babylonsister]

36. You're a jerk.

I keed, I keed! :evilgrin:

[rwheeler31]

6. uh not so bad

Truth is important.

[EFerrari]

7. We couldn't afford vitamins so that was my only source of minerals.

:shrug:

[Subdivisions]

8. I cut my teeth on the window seal of a small wood frame

tract house in the 60s. Lead just added to the flavor and the chips had this curious curl at the edges were fun to pick at.

[AlCzervik]

11. "made in Taiwan" was very popular when i was a child.

[liberalmuse]

13. I ate dirt...

and I remember going into a dumpster when I was 5 and eating a slimy banana peel that was stuck to the bottom. I even played with the original Mr. Potato Head that had all the chokable parts. It was awesome. In this day and age though, there really is no excuse for putting lead in toys. We don't need any more of The Stupid in this culture.

[readermostly]

17. In the late 50's, my grade school teacher let hold and play with mercury.

I remember how fun and interesting it was, very fluid. Yikes, what were we doing!!

[RB TexLa]

21. We used to hide in fields and stand up to get sprayed by cropdusters

It was fun.

[Liberal_in_LA]

52. Seriously? D*mn! n/t

[Maddy McCall]

22. I ate lead paint chips and fed them to my brother.

We pretended that they were aspirins when we played hospital. (Not the same as "playing doctor," you gutter minds!)

Also ate half a bottle of saccharin when I was three. Hey, I'm normal!! :rofl:

[L. Coyote]

23. I bet you drink lead in water almost every day.

There is still a lot of lead in plumbing fixtures. There is even more in pipe solder and joining. Older homes have far more. Test your water.

[napi21]

25. I guess you're all too young to remember dental fillings made with mercury, huh?

http://www.holisticmed.com/dental/amalgam/

I remember the dentist mixing the stuff and the mercury rolloing around in little balls.

I also remember playing with it in chemistry class in HS.

I've had many of those fillings and even after playing with that "neat" mercury in class, I've managed to reach 64 with no problems!

I don't mean to say everyone should ignore what science has taught us, and they have eliminated the use of those fillings, lead paint, etc. Just don't get your panties in too tight of a wad over it.

[Liberal_in_LA]

51. I remember. n/t

[Manifestor_of_Light]

54. They still put them in and mislead people.

Dentists started using mercury in fillings in 1840. By 1870, dentists had written papers showing the bad health effects of this material. Now do we do anything ELSE in medicine the same way we did it in 1840??? Hell, no!!!

The American Dental Association says that mercury must be stored as a hazardous material, according to EPA regulations, before they put it in your mouth.

They say that when it's in your mouth, it's perfectly safe.

They say that when the Hg is taken out of your mouth, it must be disposed of as a hazardous material, in accordance with EPA regulations.

Now what is wrong with this picture?? How can it be safe in your mouth and hazardous everywhere else?

Your mouth is wet, saliva is acidic, and you got mercury reacting like a wet battery in your mouth, mechanical grinding of it when chewing, and so forth.

I got all my Hg fillings taken out and replaced with Cerex by a dentist that knows what she's doing. She also pulled two root canals and cleaned out the anaerobic infections in the root tips. In just a few hours after getting those teeth pulled, I could think faster, while I was in bed recovering.

They lie when they call it a "silver filling". Silver oxide (yes plain old tarnish) is germicidal. So they're calling it by the name of a different and beneficial element.

[FloridaJudy]

26. Lead tastes sweet

That's why kids like to chew on lead paint-chips. The Romans used to cook their desserts in lead-lined vessels for the same reason.

I remember playing with the mercury from broken thermometers as a kid. I even remember those plastic puzzles made for children, where you had to get all the mercury to the center of the maze.



I know I kept sticking my feet in those X-ray machines at the shoe store, but no one would ever turn them on for me - thank goodness! I've never met anyone with toe cancer, but I imagine it wouldn't be pretty.

I wonder what things we're doing now that will make our grandchildren shudder when they recall them.

[whistle]

27. Hong Kong and Taiwan also, lead paint and lead solders/animals

...and various other little metal toys were what was available as quality toys. The cheaper plastic toys were only colored plastic and that was what was made in New Jersey and California and other places in the U.S.

So who decides what the specifications are on these toys? I would think it is the importers, distributors and even the large retailers. They know what is safe and what isn't, but these people just pass their responsibility off on a manufacturer located 12,500 miles away. Up until 20 or 30 years ago the U.S. navy used lead paint on all of their ships. I think that lead paint may still be used on metal which is exposed to the elements and corrosive environments like factories and chemical plants etc.

<snip>
Lead paint
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lead paint is paint containing lead, a heavy metal, that is used as pigment, with Lead(II) chromate (PbCrO4, "chrome yellow") and lead(II) carbonate(PbCO3, "white lead") being the most common. Lead is also added to paint to speed drying, increase durability, retain a fresh appearance, and resist moisture which causes corrosion. Paint with significant lead content is still used in industry and by the military. For example, leaded paint is sometimes used to paint roadways and parking lot lines.

Contents
1 Toxicity
2 Lead paint in art
3 Substitutes
4 Lead-based paint in the United States
4.1 Lead-based paint in housing and Real estate issues
4.2 State action against the lead paint industry
5 References
6 External links



Toxicity
Although lead improves paint performance, it is extremely toxic to living organisms. (Though, when taken in small amounts, lead may act as a vitamin by interacting with nicotinamide receptors in myocytes to aid in transport.) It is especially dangerous to children under age six whose bodies are still developing. Lead causes nervous system damage, hearing loss, stunted growth, reduced IQ, and delayed development. It can cause kidney damage and affects every organ system of the body. It also is dangerous to adults, and can cause reproductive problems in adult men. One myth related to lead-based paint is that the most common cause of poisoning was eating leaded paint chips. In fact, the most common pathway of childhood lead exposure is through ingestion of lead dust through normal hand-to-mouth contact during which children swallow lead dust dislodged from deteriorated paint or leaded dust generated during remodeling or painting. Lead dust from remodeling or deteriorated paint lands on the floor near where children play and can ingest it.


Lead paint in art
In art, lead white is known as flake white, also sometimes known as Cremnitz white. Flake white is traditionally considered to be the most structurally sound underpainting layer for oil painting, possessing a combination of flexibility, toughness, and permanence that is not to be found in other paints, and certainly not in the other white pigments.<1> Genuine flake white is difficult for artists to obtain in many countries, even though other toxic paints (such as the cadmium-based colors) may be readily available. Where flake white is currently available to artists, it is usually only in small tubes designed for painting, not in the larger cans traditionally used for underpainting (coating the canvas prior to the actual painting) which was flake white's most important purpose.

Lead paint will often become discolored over long periods of time. This is due to the reaction of the lead carbonate in the paint with traces of hydrogen sulfide in the air and with acids, often from fingerprints. <2> As a result, many older works of art that used lead paint now show some discoloration.
<MORE>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_paint

[Corgigal]

43. interesting

heres some more info;

More than 80 per cent of the world's toys are manufactured in China, and many are from small producers that are resistant to regulation. They make cheap plastic, metal and wooden toys that often have a lead content well above internationally accepted limits and even above limits set by the Chinese government.

Lead is often added to paint to make colors brighter. But it's also well known to cause damage to the nervous and reproductive systems and lead to brain damage and birth defects.

China has joined developed countries in tightening controls on lead, but the rules are difficult to enforce in a society with a thriving underground industry producing substandard goods. And low-level authorities often are reluctant to force changes that might hurt local companies

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070815/lead_china_070815/20070815?hub=TopStories

Now add autism to the mix;

Actually, I think it is possible you may have hit a connection with the rise in autism. Based upon the attached article, a high amount of lead in toys, and the way used by kids, seems to be a possibility to me. I'm not ready to link it as a cause and effect, but it certainly seems like something worth at least consideration:

http://jrnlappliedresearch.com/artic...ss1/lidsky.pdf


link for info about;

http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/136173-could-china-responsible-autism.html


As you can see I was just thinking about this yesterday. Now don't get too cranky, I'm just thinking and researching.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[babylonsister]

37. DuZY! JeffR, this is histerical, or hysterical! nt

[Canuckistanian]

41. There was no "Made in China" back in 1956

They were the godless commies, remember?

And thanks to Mao's "reforms", they weren't in a position to export anything even if they WERE allowed to make a profit.

But, "Made in Japan" was common - and often synonymous with cheap junk. Which is ironic, because the Japanese themselves would never have accepted such low-quality goods themselves.

[SoCalDem]

45. Our science teacher GAVE us "quicksilver" to play with

MERCURY :) :eyes::rofl:

[Liberal_in_LA]

49. When the thermometer would break we'd play with the little silver balls.

Fun 1960s style.

[hunter]

47. Leaded gasoline -- that was a screamer.

I think it's as good as any an explanation for the state of our culture, well that, and insecticides, which also scramble kids brains.

Serve it up with a few chips of leaded paint, parents who smoke, and pregnant women who drink, toss in a bit of "good family" do-it-yourself white people eugenics, and George W. Bush is your President.

[Liberal_in_LA]

48. ...and you grew up to be a liberal. ;-)

[Bluebear]

50. "I remember the 'Made In Japan' or 'Made in China' FOR LONGTIME"

....