Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to suggest that any of the warnings should be taken lightly. Certainly if you have bought your child a toy that is on the recall list you’ll want to take it away from them immediately although I’m not sure just how you take Thomas the train or a Barbie doll away from a small child. And with more than a million items having been recalled lately by the nation’s leading toy suppliers, most of them because they come from China and contain lead paint, I wonder what parents are going to put under the tree come this Christmas.

What I don’t understand about these recent recalls is why all the concern this year? Were the toys safer last year? Was it all right for young children to put those colorful plastic blocks they received last Christmas in their mouths? Did China just suddenly begin to use lead paint in its products or did we just find out?

As I said, I don’t want anyone to think I’m suggesting that this isn’t a serious situation. However, the fact is that many of us managed to grow up and survive in an era before lead and many other substances were even considered harmful. The ban on lead pigments in paints, for example, is a rather recent thing, at least from the perspective of someone my age. Not only did I undoubtedly play with lead contaminated toys when I was a child back in the 1920s, but so did my own children in the late 1940s and early ‘50s.

Lead based paint was first identified as a health hazard in 1949 when investigators in Baltimore linked chipping and peeling paint in poorly maintained homes to illness in children who actually swallowed pieces of the paint. However, despite that finding, federal, state and municipal governments continued to specify lead-based paints for public buildings until it was eventually banned in the 1970s.

Lead based paint wasn’t the only health hazard to which my generation was exposed. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the ban on asbestos became widespread. Prior to that it was almost impossible to avoid exposure to the material as it was used in everything from pipe and ceiling insulation to flooring and roofing tiles and even in brake pads on your automobile. As a matter of fact, my bunk aboard one of the ships on which I served in World War II – the upper one in a tier of three – was so close to an overhead asbestos insulated pipe that I just about managed to wiggle in beneath it. Fortunately, since we spent most of our time near the Equator I generally slept on deck to avoid the heat.

And then there was mercury. When I was a boy it was used in an array of products ranging from thermometers to the centers of golf balls and we would take both of them apart so we could play with the silvery fluid that separated into tiny, indestructible beads. I assume that everyone today is aware of the dangers of mercury, particularly in the atmosphere or through such sources as contaminated fish. But did you know that the United States is still exporting mercury to other countries and only now is there an effort underway to regulate or control its use. A bill which would ban the export of mercury and provide for permanent storage facilities for domestic stock, was passed by the House of Representatives this Nov. 13 and companion legislature introduced by Barack Obama of Illinois and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is pending in the Senate.

Another Congressional bill, still in committee, is entitled the Consumer Product Safety Modernization. It was drafted following congressional hearings into the toy recalls which revealed that the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the agency responsible for overseeing the safety of more than 15,000 products, is not only under staffed and under funded, but that its head has been accepting free trips from the toy industry.

OK, so you may think this is a serious situation, but what do you think the chances are that either the bill to regulate mercury or the one to modernize consumer safety measures will make it through Congress? And even if they do, they’ll probably be vetoed by President Bush for being too costly or too anti-business.

Back in World War II, when someone was moving too slowly, the drill sergeant would exhort them to "get the lead out!" It’s time we literally and figuratively told congress and the president the same thing.