The Associated Press recently did some testing on drinking glasses found in a Warner Bros. store in Burbank, Calif., and found that they not only contained lead, but also the dangerous element cadmium.
Oh wait, it gets better. These glasses, which depict such characters as Superman, Wonder Woman and Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz,” contained 16 to 30 percent lead. The legal limit is .03 percent. Are you kidding me? This is why I only buy plastic cups. OK, that, and they don’t break when thrown across the room by a 1-year-old.
Is it really that hard to make paint without lead in it? Aborigines and natives have been making paints from natural pigments for thousands of years, but in this enlightened society, we can’t seem to do anything that doesn’t involve making us sick.
Coca-Cola recalled 88,000 glasses over worries of high lead levels in red glass, and of course there is the Shrek debacle. As if the stupidity of these companies couldn’t get any worse, the manufacturers of the Superman et al. glasses are arguing that they are not meant for children and are therefore not subject to the federal regulations for lead.
So are you telling me that it’s only 20-year-old comic book nerds who are going to buy these glasses? No, kids are going to see these glasses and want them, too. The other issue I have is this: If these glasses have more than 1,000 times the legal limit of lead for children, then I don’t want to drink from it, either. Why don’t you just take them off the shelves for the greater good of humanity?
It makes me wonder what the next poison du jour unscrupulous manufacturers are going to try and subject my children to. Chinese manufacturers decided to substitute the dangerous element cadmium for lead as a way to get through the federal regulations.
Why not just go for the gusto and start using radium for glow-in-the-dark paint again? It’s naturally luminescent and will give our children cancer. Better yet, why not just start making the glasses out of substandard materials that will shatter when they drink from them? Decrease the surplus population, as the humanitarian Scrooge once said.
If things get much worse, then I am just going to start drinking out of coconut shells, à la “Gilligan’s Island.” But I guess then I’d have to worry about pesticides.
Image Source: flickr.com/photos/joeandsarah/2118601275
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