12% of children's jewelry contains 10% cadmium; more dangerous than lead | Hacker News Reader

12% of children's jewelry contains 10% cadmium; more dangerous than lead

cnews.canoe.ca

16 pointsAlex39179 comments

"There’s nothing positive that you can say about this metal. It’s a poison"

Unless you're operating a nuclear reactor.

Yeah, that struck me too. My dad did his doctorate on cadmium; his jobs included things like cancer research and solar cells. There're a lot of uses for heavy metal radioisotopes. Like anything else, they're tools - they can be used for either good, evil, or indifference, depending upon who's using them.

I certainly wouldn't give it to a child to play with, but the overall tone of this article seemed very much like plain old scaremongering. I'd believe it more if they'd used a more neutral, scientific tone. It'd also help had I not checked on their "CDC list of 275 most hazardous chemicals" - the only Google result that wasn't a reprint of the article was this:

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxpro2.html

There are 275 toxicological profiles, but they are not ordered; I can't find anywhere where cadmium is #7.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/cercla/07list.html

Nifty; missed that. Again, I don't think that cadmium should be in toys, but I'd like to point out that according to the fact sheet, shellfish and leafy vegetables are your most likely sources of exposure. And smoking of course, which doubles your cadmium exposure. Somehow smoking never seems to cause quite as much of a panic as Chinese toys, despite all the other known carcinogens in cigarette smoke...

It's disgusting how many organizations say: "But we meet safety standards." All while giving a known carcinogen to children.

I mean, forget about the "company" for a minute - companies are made of people - don't any of them care?

Yes reading this convinced me that as much as people criticize companies in China, the only reason US and European companies are more careful is because of regulation...

It's a good argument in favor of regulations and strong health agencies.

It is a good reason to stop deindustrialization of USA and Canada. Europe as far as I know produce a lot of toys themselves. At least I saw a toy truck made in Sweden. Guess what was the truck's model ;)?

As long as consumers force prices down companies will focus on making things cheaply to maintain their profit margins and thus their jobs.

It's easy for safety to be over looked when the bottom line is ALL that matters.

Consumers are their own worst enemy. Only regulation forces companies to comply but any politician that regulates and pushes prices up risks being un-elected.

Cadmium is commonly used to make yellow, organge and red paints, beware of stuff in those colours.

The fact that it is banned doesn't seem to mean much.

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