| Sanitary services began an emergency inspection of children's stores The Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare has begun unscheduled raids on the shelves of toy stores. The inspections began due to increasing complaints from parents about low-quality products for children. According to established rules, toys must be checked for compliance with epidemiological standards once every two years. However, as the head of the department’s press service, Lyubov Voropaeva, said yesterday in a conversation with a Vremya Novostey correspondent, consumer rights defenders had to urgently begin additional inspections.
“They started calling us and reporting that children felt various ailments while playing,” said Ms. Voropaeva. According to her, there were so many requests that doctors simply could not ignore them.
First of all, experts check toys made from pastisol, which are popularly called rubber toys. It was against them, according to Ms. Voropaeva, that the largest number of complaints were received. Children drag them into the bathroom, play with them, and chew on them. And as it turns out, these games are fraught with various diseases, ranging from allergies to respiratory diseases and poisoning.
To date, specialists from the State Sanitary and Epidemiological Supervision centers have carried out various analyzes in most regions, and the statistics they presented yesterday leave much to be desired. Thus, in almost all subjects of the federation, gross violations were identified in the sale of toys. In some regions, for example, the Tula, Smolensk, Bryansk and Oryol regions, the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and a number of republics, dolls and rubber toys were sold without documents confirming their safety. In addition, violations were also detected in the concentration of harmful substances. Thus, in samples of toys, doctors found methyl alcohol, exceeding the maximum permissible concentration of phenol by 130 times, and formaldehyde by six times. In the Oryol region, dibutyl phthalate was found in a water extract from two samples, and in Chuvashia, toys containing petroleum products and toluene were found. As the inspection found out, Novosibirsk toys are rich in various chemicals and metals. For example, the content of chromium, lead and cadmium in them exceeds the permitted values by one and a half, 23 and 6 times, respectively. And this is only for eight months of this year. According to data for last year, in Russia as a whole, 2.71% of the toys selected for examination did not meet sanitary and epidemiological requirements.
At the moment, the sale of low-quality toys has been suspended. According to the federal service, in some cases administrative measures were also taken, including several cases referred to regional prosecutors' offices for consideration. In addition, the federal service notes that this year toys not only from domestic but also from foreign manufacturers will come under suspicion - in particular, children's products from China. Two Chinese companies involved in supplying toys to Russia have already had their licenses revoked. Anna ShPAK |
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