Mom: Chemical-laced toy made son 'drunk'

[daninthemoon]

Source: Yahoo News / AP

A woman whose toddler son ingested a popular toy that contains a chemical that turns into a powerful "date rape" drug when eaten said Thursday she knew he was ill when he began to stumble, seemed drunk and started vomiting.
The mother, Shelby Esses, said her 20-month-old son Jacob, fell down and was limp after getting into his older sister's Aqua Dots, a Chinese-made toy recalled Wednesday by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Aqua Dots, a highly popular holiday toy sold by Australia-based Moose Enterprises, are beads that can be arranged into designs and fused when sprayed with water. The toy was pulled from shelves in North American and Australia after scientists found they contain a chemical that converts into a dangerous drug when eaten. Two children in the U.S. and three in Australia were hospitalized after swallowing the beads.

Scientists say a chemical coating on the beads, when ingested, metabolizes into the so-called date rape drug gamma hydroxy butyrate. When eaten, the compound — made from common and easily available ingredients — can induce unconsciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death.







Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071108/ap_on_re_us/toys_date_rape_drug

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Didn't we used to have safety standards in this country, especially for imports, and especialy from China? I'm glad my kids are grown, because I don't trust any toys or children's products at this point. Gotta warn my son about the grandkids. Again! Be careful parents and grandparents.

[Kittycat]

1. Hard to find reliable companies

I recently started selling toys that I would consider "child-safe", but it's not small task trying to find products from companies that you can trust. Sadly, one of the best guarantees I have is letters in writing from the manufacturers outlining their testing procedures and safety ratings. I think PlanToys has to be one of the best, as far as importers go, but they're so overwhelmed with orders, it's hard to get some of the more popular items this year.

[Beerboy]

2. Let the lawsuits begin!

The connection between American corporations hiring out slave-labor to the fascist Chinese government @ the expense of American customers/consumers is every bit as insidious as US corporations hiding their profits from Hitler's Holocaust.

[daninthemoon]

4. I just hope the truly responsible parties in all these will get nailed.

Each passing day, it appears this has become a HUGE problem, with lots of blame to go around. When exactly did regulation of these imports stop? Or is it more a lack of enforcement? It's clearly a lack of ethics and morality.

[murielm99]

3. You know some of those specialty catalogs

that clutter up your mail? Take a second look at some of them.

Some years ago, one of those catalogs offered Laura and Mary Ingalls dolls. They looked like wonderful hand-crafted dolls. Mary was about 8 1/2 inches tall, and Laura was a bit shorter. I ordered the dolls for my oldest daughter's Christmas. She was about 9 then.

When the dolls did not come, I called the company. I found out they were a small company, and the dolls were made by a husband and wife in Wisconsin. The husband had had surgery, so they were behind in their orders.

I was able to contact the couple directly. The dolls were still late, so I saved them for a birthday present.

This couple put me on to other crafters. I went to a local toy tractor show and found some other people who made or sold good durable toys. I got homemade blocks, and other wooden toys for my son. I can't remember everything I got. Some of the toys have left the house with my kids as they grew up. They wanted to keep their special toys.

This retired couple is not alive any more. I got to know them almost 20 years ago. But I have a feeling you could go to a local craft show, or look closely at some of the catalogs you get. I don't have any grandkids yet. If I did, or if I was a parent today, I would go this way exclusively. I would not get any toys from the major stores.

[daninthemoon]

7. An internet website link of these type companies would be super.

Anyone know of any?

[Beerboy]

15. I second that 110%. n/t.

[jgraz]

5. Damn, I never got cool toys like that when I was a kid

I was stuck playing with lawn darts and BB guns. :cry:

[Bonobo]

6. Date Rape Drug for kids! I would say more than a little recall is in order here.

[kelligesq]

8. The solution to this is Buy American or Dont Buy

again, I'm a newcomer so I dont know if you know that even parts of cereal (kellogg's, post, all of them) are being supplied by China..and all of our drugs.

I happen to have an abcessed tooth under caps - jaw swollen to the size of a fist, did you know our pills are being made with ingredients from China? I know it now - ordinarily in years past after two days the swelling would go down with the antibiotic - I suspect the meds are fudged or weakened in strength even though the pill is double the strength I took years ago.

4 days - still swollen

This is not to tell you personal info but to share that it's not just toys - it's our food and meds too.

And watch out for fish and shrimp and crustaceans in the supermarket. Don't buy from Thailand, Indonesia and definitely not China where people are getting cancer from their polluted water (Dr. Gupta on CNN)

Look for labels "fresh caught" on Tuna cans.

If it's "farmed" it means you may be ingesting the illegal pharmas the Chinese and Thais and others are
putting in their ponds. Illegal in this country but not theirs.

Our supermarket has taken to putting up little signs on the fresh fish to tell what country it comes from because so many people are now asking. But there is no sign on the farmed fish. You have to ask. And maybe if we ask enough and leave the farmed fish and
imported fish on their counters, the giant supermarket chains will get the picture and be forced to help us in "Buy American".

The frozen fish rarely says whether its fresh frozen or farmed or the country of origin.

We fought for so many years in this country for consumer safeguards....but there are no safeguards in
these "trade agreements".

Consumer buyer beware.

[oahubob]

11. I work in the Pharmaceutical/Chemical Industry here in the US...

We make nutriceuticals and bulk chemicals used in all sorts of foods and beverages. We tried to sell bulk quantities to major Food brands here in the US. Our products are ultra-pure compared to everything else on the market (I take them everyday, but only our products, the others have appreciably higher heavy metal contamination). We got shot down by these guys because using our product would add an unacceptable $0.03 per box of mac&cheese or whatnot over what they were getting from China, and they think they couldn't get that back because no one would want to pay it...

Our cheap food policy here in the US is coming back to bite us in the ass...

You truly get what you pay for...

We finally figured on trying to beat them at their own game and started to put this stuff out ourselves, and are charging a very decent price for it, and are getting it from consumers who actually care about what they put in their bodies...

I think there's going to be a huge backlash in the US food industry as people wake up...

First it was the pets, then poisoned fish, and now toddlers on ecstacy... What's next?

[Beerboy]

18. Good post.

Thanks a lot, now you're going to have to kill all of us.:spank:

[kelligesq]

19. Thanks - So Scary I didnt realize

they even have our macaroni and cheese.

Can you give us a hint what isn't being "added to"
from China.

[daleo]

26. We had a horrible box of macaroni and cheese recently

Honestly, I had to wonder if there was a China connection, given the tainted pet food stories earlier this year.

It was most unusual - I wondered how could anyone make macaroni and cheese taste awful? Maybe bad wheat was all I could think of. I checked the company's website, but it wasn't very informative as to source country.

[NYC]

27. Can you tell us the brand name so we can buy it?

...We finally figured on trying to beat them at their own game and started to put this stuff out ourselves, and are charging a very decent price for it, and are getting it from consumers who actually care about what they put in their bodies...

Welcome to DU. :hi:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

9. I would have thought that the dead giveaway...

Would have been when he started playing Industrial Music on 10 on his Fisher Price CD player. ;-)

[0007]

10. LOL!! Now that's funny.

[merwin]

12. My Fisher Price CD Player goes to 11!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. Parmesan cheese contains compounds that the human body...

metabolizes into GHB.

So does butter.

In fact, the human body makes its own supply of GHB.

I'd like to know what chemical we're actually talking about here, and what concentration, otherwise I'm calling fear-mongering media sensationalism.

Also, as a general rule, don't let kids eat art supplies.

[aquart]

14. As a general rule, toddlers put EVERYTHING into their mouths.

That's why children's art supplies are different from adult's.

And there are at least two children in comas, but you're okay with giving this "toy" to your kids?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. Sure.

I'm also OK with giving kids scissors, paint, and hot glue guns.

Provided they are old enough to use them, or they're being supervised by adults.

What I'm not okay with is panic, scientific illiteracy, fear-mongering, xenophobia, and media sensationalism.

[kelligesq]

20. so poison pet food, lead in paint , ecoli in veggies is ok with you or

was that just fearmongering?

I forgot to mention the report that the Thais are cutting up
that poison blow fish which is a delicay for them and putting
it in our canned tuna report from CNN - so by all means I
think you should take it up with CNN and Dr. Gupta. And ask
them why they are reporting this stuff along with the recalls
.  After all they shouldnt be telling us and scaring us.
Better to let us find out in the hospital. sarcasm.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

22. Watch a lot of CNN, do you?

[crim son]

30. Do you have kids?

Curious.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. Yes.

But also an education.

[crim son]

35. How does that education influence your understanding of this

story? I don't understand.

[Beerboy]

17. Hillary will make your kids eat Gov't Parmesan cheese!

:scared:

[mikeytherat]

29. It is my understanding that the substances in question are acetones.

mikey_the_rat

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

32. No.

For one thing, there aren't a class of compounds called acetones.

There is only acetone, 2-propanone.

The compound in the aqua dots is 1,4-butanediol. It can get oxidized to 4-hydroxybutanoic acid, GHB. But then again, so can lots of other compounds, like butyric acid, or succinate.

[Sentath]

31. Bad title, but it explains some of the chemistry

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2237906

and economics for that matter.

[tanyev]

21. Even if the chemical coating weren't dangerous, I would have reservations about this product

simply because of all the tiny little beads. It's a given that younger siblings would manage to ingest a few.

[shenmue]

23. Why are these parents not doing anything while their kids put stuff in their mouths?

Hello? :shrug:

If you can't be there, why buy this stuff for the kids to begin with? Why not read what's on the pack and not buy it if you have any suspicions?

If you give in to your kids because you like to get what they want, instead of watching out for them like you're supposed to, what's the point?

[Kokonoe]

24. I'm guilty of buying all kinds of poison toys.

No toys this christmas.

[MisterP]

25. standards?! protections?! that's heterodoxy!

note how whenever They discuss the flushing of jobs from the U.S., they never even mention protections or barriers--even in the negative sense? only "adapting" to "inevitable" globalization: alternative theories are not even mocked, they vanish from the mind--and They expect that to happen to our minds. It's an extreme solipsism, like Philip K. Dick's Eye in the Sky--or their Randroid bibles, where the squishy socialist characters don't just end ignominiously, they vanish from memory altogether!

[Frank Cannon]

28. Coming soon from China: Teething rings crafted from plutonium

This whole Chinese poison toy/food thing has gone beyond absurd. When I was a kid, we used to joke about cheap stuff imported from Japan, but none of it ever KILLED us.

[MissB]

34. Target readily took ours back today

Without a receipt even, and full price cash back.