Mattel effect: toys in India under lens

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has sought a reply on the safety of toys in India from the Bureau of Indian Standards, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 7, 2007, 01:46:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Call it the Mattel effect. Toys, even branded, are now considered lethal for children in India.

Reacting to Mattel’s decision of recalling eight lakh toys worldwide, The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has sought a reply on the safety of toys in India from the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). The BIS formulates standards for products sold in India.

According to a recent study by NGO Toxic Link, a few branded toys had toxic content higher than the permissible level. In India, lead up to 600 particles per million parts in toys is allowed, the standards equivalent to the US.

While the standards subscribe to global norms, Ravi Aggarwal of Toxic Link says there is no body to enforce the standards. “Essentially, there is no body to look after product safety on the lines of the US.” In the US, a product found violating the standards has to be withdrawn from the market under government supervision. “What is the use of having standards when there is no body to monitor them,” Aggarwal said.

The commission, in a letter to BIS Director-General Sayan Chatterjee has sought details about the BIS standards for Indian and imported toys and what the government was doing to ensure that the standards were being followed. “What safeguards have been taken by the BIS to protect children from toys containing lead paint and other hazardous substances,” the commission has asked.

Sandhya Bajaj, a member of the commission, told Hindustan Times, that toys with high lead content can be dangerous as children tend to bite the toys, thereby consuming the paint. Aggarwal confirmed that most paints used to colour toys and jewellery for children have high lead content, thus making them toxic for children.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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