Marilyn Furer: Working to get the lead out of children's products
Marilyn Furer is a doer. In the early 1970s, when her 18-month-old daughter Julie was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, the Illinois resident promptly founded that state’s first chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to help raise funds for research and to educate parents and families. She’s been an activist ever since.
Fast-forward some 30 years, to 2005, when Furer heard news reports that plastic lunch boxes could contain lead. On her next visit to her two granddaughters in Florida, then 7 and 9, she decided to test the five plastic lunch boxes in the house with a home-testing kit she bought at a local hardware store. The result: three had lead and were thrown away.
About a year later, her newest grandson Jensen began wearing plastic baby bibs; he drooled so heavily that he was nicknamed “Waterfall.” Furer bought some plastic bibs at Wal-Mart hoping they would help him stay dry. Within a few days, however, she noticed Jensen was putting the bibs in his mouth, sucking them vigorously. Furer couldn’t believe that a baby product could contain lead, but nonetheless decided to test the bibs. “What the heck. You can’t be too safe when it comes to kids,” she said in a recent telephone interview. She bought some new home testing kits, confident none would turn pink, the sign that lead is present. “To my dismay and disbelief, there were high levels of lead in these bibs,” she said.
Initially, Furer thought she made a mistake or the testing equipment was faulty. She didn’t know where to turn, but found the group that initiated the lead lunch box tests, the Center for Environmental Health in California, and sent the bibs and the testing equipment to them.
The rest, as you may know by now, is history. In early May, the CEH, along with the state attorneys general of New York and Illinois, announced that Wal-Mart would stop selling plastic bibs in this country.
Wal-Mart's announcement came the same day that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning to parents to stop using any old plastic bibs that are worn or cracked. A week later, the agency wrote to the voluntary-standard setting organization, ASTM International, asking it to develop an industry standard for lead in children's vinyl products to eliminate or significantly reduce children's exposure to lead. "While all the testing the agency has done finds minimal, almost negligible, levels of lead, we do have the goal to remove as much lead from a child's environment as possible," said agency spokeswoman Julie Vallese.
Furer is pleased with the results that her actions initiated — but not completely. She remains critical of the CPSC, which she believes should have taken stronger action on all vinyl bibs, not just old ones. “The government should be ashamed of itself, not protecting babies as it’s supposed to do,” she said.
“It’s ludicrous that a grandmother from the Midwest has to accidentally stumble on this,” Furer said, taking time out from writing letters to newspaper editors to further publicize her findings and concerns.
After all, she says, “an activist never stops.”
And for that reason, it’s clear why Furer deserves to join our list of safety crusaders.
Do you know an individual or group who should be on our list? If so, please contact us.
Posted by: Kaitlyn Murray | Jul 18, 2007 12:09:22 PM
I'm with you - I had used these bibs for nearly 2 years (with my oldest daughter and then with my newborn). To say that I am angry is a gross understatement. How dare they use lead anywhere near a baby. What - was I going to put a bib on a monkey? No, I put it on my child - MY CHILD.