Seemingly safe toys can pose dangers for small children

By admin November 27, 2012 06:03

By Melanie Yamaguchi Cronkite News PHOENIX – As the holidays approach, parents of small children should keep in mind that seemingly harmless toys have pieces that can be choking hazards, a surgeon at Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

“When you have small kids in your house, you just need to be aware of the dangers of batteries, magnets and small toys, but also small pieces of plastic, little things that are on your floor,” Dr. Kathy Graziano said at a news conference organized by the Arizona Public Interest Research Group.

Arizona PIRG released a national report saying that there are still many dangerous toys on store shelves, including those with high levels of toxic chemicals and others loud enough to harm a child’s hearing.

But Monica Flores, a spokeswoman for Arizona PIRG’s Education Fund, said the biggest threat to children’s health is choking hazards.

“Toddlers put almost everything in their mouths,” she said.

Flores said the best way for parents to measure whether a toy can cause choking is using an empty toilet paper roll.

At a press conference that discussed the findings from “Trouble in Toyland: the 27th annual survey of toy safety,” these toys were found to barely meet federal standards for toy size requirements or were identified as choking hazards for young children.

Monica Flores, spokeswoman for the Arizona PIRG Education Fund, speaks at a press conference at Phoenix Children’s Hospital about the hazards of certain children’s toys.
Small toys like these might be a choking hazard for small children, according to “Trouble in Toyland: the 27th annual survey of toy safety.”
Dr. Kathy Graziano, pediatric surgeon at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, discusses the danger of children swallowing small magnets.
According to the report, toys like these have small parts and magnets that may be dangerous for young children to play with.
Monica Flores says that toys like this guitar exceed the decibel level set by federal standards.
Photos by Paige Schwahn

Graziano said small objects like battery buttons from toys are a major source of long-term hospitalizations, multiple surgeries and deaths among babies and toddlers.

“It goes down the esophagus, it gets stuck there before it makes it very far,” she said. “It can be there for a few days or maybe a week before anybody knows it.

“At the end of the day, they can’t protect themselves,” she said. “We have to protect them, so that’s to me really important, to make sure that products are labeled appropriately and that manufacturers are actually putting things on the shelves that are safe for our children.”