The toy, called Aquadots, allows children to arrange small colorful beads into various patterns on a grid. When they are sprayed with water, a thin layer of glue on the dots dries and the pattern sticks together. The product is produced by Australian-based Moose Enterprises. The toys were recalled from stores when scientists discovered that an element in the glue, when ingested, metabolizes into Gamma-Hydroxybutyrate, also known as GHB. This powerful drug can cause unconsciousness, seizures, coma and even death. Suppliers could potentially face jail time or thousands of dollars in fines.
The toys were supposed to be made with non toxic 1,5-pentanediol, but instead the factories used 1,4-butanediol, which is found in cleaning agents. The FDA classifies this chemical as a Class I hazard, meaning it has the possibility of fatal consequences. Chinese authorities have not provided a reason why this substitution was made, but it should be noted that the dangerous chemical is almost eight times cheaper than 1,5-pen-tanediol.
Jacob Esses, 20 months old, was one of the children to accidentally ingest some of the chemical, when he got into his sister’s set of Aquadots. The doctor who treated him at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Dr. Matt Jaeger, had the following to say to MSNBC: “It was pretty dramatic. He was unconscious in this coma for about six hours. And then over the course of just a few minutes, went from being completely asleep to wide awake and playing like nothing ever happened.”
This recall comes on the heels of a similar incident. Several months ago, millions of toys made in China through the Mattel Corporation were recalled after it was discovered that they contained dangerously high levels of lead.
These two incidents, so close together, are indicative of an unsettling trend. As America outsources an increasing amount of jobs and factories to foreign countries, we lose the ability to monitor what goes into the products we consume. We take for granted that someone is making sure that we are not bringing poisons into our homes, but unfortunately this is an optimistic view of things. The simple fact is that a factory manager thousands of miles away, out from under the auspices of American watchdog groups, can make decisions that could kill us or make us sick, and only to save a few cents per unit.
All the blame, however, cannot be put on the factories or the producers. We must remember that when an American company outsources work, it does so because American consumers have declared, with our wallets, that we do not mind shipping jobs overseas if we can have the things that we love just a little bit cheaper, even if it means lower quality. In principle, we would all love to support the shadow-of-its-former-self American industrial economy, but when it actually comes time to go buy a new car, appliance or even something as small as a toy, do we give a second thought to where it was produced? Surely most of us, if interviewed, would say that super-stores like Wal-Mart are bad for local small-business economies, but in practice, we flock to these very same stores in droves, seduced by sales and discounts. We as a nation must ask ourselves how much we are willing to put up with and how long we will look the other way in order to save a few bucks. Perhaps the antiquated concept of “buying American” is needed now more than ever. American safety guidelines, clearly stricter than Chinese standards, have kept us safe in the past. Instead of placing full blame on the Chinese, we must all be committed to parting ways with a few more cents at the register, if we ever want to be confident that our consumer products are not consuming us instead.