One-third of toys contain harmful chemicals!

I just got this in my email from a great organization, MomsRising.org (I recommend getting on their list!) and thought it was so important I wanted to share it as widely as possible. Have a wonderful, safe, and healthy holiday season!

Dear MomsRising.org Member,
Starting your holiday shopping this week? The LAST thing you want to be giving the children and babies on your list is dangerous chemicals like lead and arsenic. Yet, when the Ecology Center, a Michigan-based nonprofit, tested over 1,500 popular children's toys for lead, cadmium, arsenic, PVC and other harmful chemicals, they found that one in three toys tested were found to contain "medium" or "high" levels of chemicals of concern.

Scary, right? But knowledge truly is power in this case. Before you give a child a toy this holiday season, search the HealthyToys database for its chemical test results:
http://www.momsrising.org/healthytoys

When you're at the store, you can search the HealthyToys database from your cell phone. Simply text "healthytoys [name of toy]" -- for example "healthytoys Elmo" or "healthytoys Wii" -- to 41411.

Then help other parents protect their kids. Print out this information and post it at work, school, the grocery, wherever you go.

From MomsRising, http://www.momsrising.org/

P.S. According to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, toys containing toxic phthalates are supposed to be banned starting on February 10, 2009. But the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is saying that stores can continue to sell down their inventories as long as they were manufactured before the February deadline. If you haven't already, please sign our letter to the CPSC to tell them to stop monkeying around with our kids' health! (Already 6,443 people have signed.) Go to http://www.momsrising.org/really_ban_phthalates to add your name.

Tools for advocates

Early care and education

Supporting a Diverse and Culturally Competent Workforce, from the Center for Law and Social Policy, discusses research on how cultural identity and language skills relate to healthy development, as well as how a diverse and culturally competent early care and education workforce can support children's development.

Developing America's Potential: An Agenda for High-Quality Child Care, from the National Women's Law Center, offers a framework for federal reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Organizations and individuals can sign on in support of the agenda.

Impacts of Early Childhood Programs, from the Brookings Institute, is a set of user-friendly research briefs on the positive effects of state preschool, Head Start, Early Head Start, model child care programs, and nurse home visiting on children and families.

Health

Communities in Action for Asthma-Friendly Environments offers a searchable, online resource bank of hundreds of asthma-related tools and materials.

Where We Live Matters for Our Health: the Links Between Housing and Health, from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, discusses strategies to improve health by ensuring that everyone in the US lives in healthy homes and neighborhoods.