A Look at Who Is in Charge of Testing for Tainted Toys

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• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Finally tonight, the second of two reports on toxic toys. Last week, economics correspondent Paul Solman looked at lead levels. Tonight, he focuses on who's in charge of testing for tainted toys.

• PAUL SOLMAN:

  In Rochester, New York, Judy Braiman, grandmother of eight, holiday shopping. But Braiman was not preparing to stuff the stockings for her grandkids. She's a consumer vigilante…

• JUDY BRAIMAN, Consumer Activist:

  OK. I think I'm ready.

• PAUL SOLMAN:

  … amassing specimens for the lab. A former adviser to the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission soon after it was founded, Braiman also wrote the first "Consumer Reports" toy guide in 1988. These days, with toys flooding the market from relatively unregulated countries, mainly China, she's more worried than ever.

• JUDY BRAIMAN:

  Could you look for lead and cadmium along with the phthalate?

• PAUL SOLMAN:

  The lab that tests toys for Braiman has been in business for 25 years. We asked owner Bruce Hoogesteger what the toy results have been showing.

• BRUCE HOOGESTEGER, President, Paradigm Environmental Services:

  Within about the last two years, 10 percent, 20 percent, 25 percent of those products have some sort of elevated lead, cadmium or other metals concentrations in them.

• PAUL SOLMAN:

  At her home, Judy Braiman showed us some highlights from what she calls her chamber of horrors.

• JUDY BRAIMAN:

  Asbestos is in this products, two different types of asbestos. This is a teething blanket where children bite on it. And we tested the parts where they can bite on it, and we found high levels of phthalate. It's a hormone disrupter and a carcinogen. And also that particular product there, that…

• PAUL SOLMAN:

  The Frosted Flakes, yes.

• JUDY BRAIMAN:

  Yes, the — it wasn't the flakes. It was the product that they were promoting in here has mercury in it.

• PAUL SOLMAN:

  And then there's — what is to Braiman — the most worrisome new toy toxin, cadmium.

• JUDY BRAIMAN:

  Which is also a heavy metal, and far more dangerous than lead.

• PAUL SOLMAN:

  The EPA allows only five parts per billion of cadmium in our water supply.

• JUDY BRAIMAN:

  We found it contained 340,000 parts per million in the charm alone.

• PAUL SOLMAN:

  So that's 34 percent cadmium?

• JUDY BRAIMAN:

  Yes, 34 percent cadmium.

• PAUL SOLMAN:

  And where is it made?

• JUDY BRAIMAN:

  It's made in China.