January 25, 2010
In the late fall we had the pleasure of hosting Michael Green, the founder and executive director of the Center for Environmental Health (CEH), here in our Q Collection Junior showroom. CEH’s mission is to protect people from toxic chemicals and promote business products and practices that are safe for public health and the environment.
CEH invited several friends and we did as well, Ali Wing included.
Michael gave us a demo of the famous XRF gun. This is the device behind all of the various ‘toxic toy’ reports (Healthy Toy report here). At a cost of over $30,000 each, they are rare to see in action. Essentially, you point the scanner at a particular product, pull the trigger and a minute or so later you get a read out of what materials are present down to the parts per billion level. Arsenic, lead, cadmium, bromine (likely brominated flame retardants) – all of the red flags show up. You can’t hide.
We tested our cribs, changing tables, organic cotton bedding, a baby bottle and several toys (a metal toy, “Duck on Bike”, from Chinatown and two different rubber duckies). Our cribs and bedding were free and clear. The duckies passed but with some concerns. The baby bottle was fine. The metal ‘Duck on Bike’, however, contained dangerously high levels of lead. It has now graduated from toy to art (image below).
[...] Michael Greene founded and is the executive director of the non profit - Center for Environmental Health. Its mission is to protect your family and community from toxic chemicals. If you have heard of the recalls surrounding the use of lead in children’s jewelry, you know their work (our previous blog post on CEH’s work is here) [...]