In Support of Mr. Squiggles

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Is Mr. Squiggles the toy hamster on your child's holiday wish list this year? Then you may have been concerned by the reports that came out over the weekend about the poor safety ratings that Mr. Squiggles recently received from The Good Guide, a consumer group that claims to "find safe, healthy, and green products." Normally, I would lend my full support to an organization that's highlighting toxicity in children's toys. But this time, I think The Good Guide got it wrong.

Is Mr. Squiggles the toy hamster on your child's holiday wish list this year? Then you may have been concerned by the reports that came out over the weekend about the poor safety ratings that Mr. Squiggles recently received from The Good Guide, a consumer group that claims to "find safe, healthy, and green products." Normally, I would lend my full support to an organization that's highlighting toxicity in children's toys. But this time, I think The Good Guide got it wrong.

The Good Guide released a press release over the weekend claiming that Mr. Squiggles pet hamsters, made by Zhu Zhu toys are unsafe after finding antimony, which can cause health problems, on the hair and nose of one of the toy hamsters. The group assigned the toy, aimed at 3- to 10-year-olds, a rating of 5.2 on a 10-point scale.

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Zhu Zhu Pets, which retail for about $10, have become this season's toy craze, following in the footsteps of Tickle Me Elmo and Cabbage Patch Kids. The items fetch $40 or more on resale Web sites like eBay and Craigslist. This is why they wound up on The Good Guide's radar for testing.

Antimony was measured at 93 parts per million in the hamster's fur and at 106 parts per million in its nose. The Good Guide claims that both readings exceed the allowable level of 60 parts per million. But according to Jennifer Taggart, aka The Smart Mama, a green mom who wields her own toxicity testing equipment, the Good Guide's results are just plain wrong. According to The Smart Mama, "the current US standard is 60 ppm soluble antimony in paints and surface coatings used on children’s toys, not total antimony. And that is a BIG difference."

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