Group: Seemingly safe toys can pose dangers for small children

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Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2012
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 said Tuesday.

“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.

“If a toy passes through an empty toilet paper roll, it is too small for a child under the age of 3,” she said.

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.”

Tempe resident Erin Eccleston, who attended the news conference, said she constantly worries that her 6-month-old daughter will put something hazardous in her mouth.

“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.”