When playthings scare

Pushpa Girimaji

If you look at those soft, cuddly toys in the market, you will think that they are absolutely harmless. But if you are giving it to a toddler who will put the toy in her/his mouth, I would urge you to look at it more carefully. Are the two buttons, representing the eyes of the toy character, sewn tightly enough to prevent it from getting detached, particularly when a child puts it into its mouth? Or is the beautifully crafted toy train really safe or will the wheels of the coach come off when a child chews on it? I say this because a number of children have choked on such small parts of toys and while some have survived, some have not.

It’s for this reason that in the United States, the Consumer Product Safety Commission constantly monitors the safety of toys and a number of them meant for infants are recalled from the market because of the threat of small parts getting detached from the toy, thereby posing ‘choking hazard’.

On May 12 this year, for example, CPSC announced the recall of a ‘pacifier holder’, because of a complaint that the fin of the stuffed whale attached to the pacifier holder, had got detached. Similarly on April 15, a colourful ‘Moogy Plush’ toy meant for toddlers between 12 and 36 months of age was recalled because of similar complaint. While in one case, the button on the pocket of the toy had fallen off while a baby was playing with it, in another case the toy’s eyes had become loose. In the US, it is mandatory for manufacturers and retailers to report to CPSC, any safety related complaint, or injury or death connected with a product. Consumers too can complain about unsafe goods.

Likewise, in Europe, toys that pose a safety hazard or do not comply with the Toy Safety Directive are either withdrawn from the market or stopped at the port of entry itself (if they are being imported). Thus, recently, a ‘baby rattler’ was recalled on the ground that the rattler can easily break and generate small parts that can get lodged in a child’s throat. Similarly, a toy ‘coffee and kitchen set’ was rejected at the border because they posed ‘suffocation and choking’ hazard. And they also did not comply with the Toy Safety Directive and the relevant European standard. 

Unfortunately in India, there is no such mechanism to weed out unsafe toys from the market till the Consumer protection regulatory authority (envisaged under the new Consumer Protection Bill) comes into existence. So, till then, parents have to exercise utmost caution and care while buying toys for their children. Always watch out for toys that have small parts that a child can swallow or parts that can get dislodged from the toy when a child puts it into the mouth, posing a choking hazard. However, having said that, I must point out that manufacturers have the primary responsibility of ensuring that their toys are safe in all respects and that they do not cause injuries and deaths.

A recent case of an 11-month-old child in Mumbai suffering life threatening complications after swallowing a plastic steering wheel of a toy, highlights this point. Here, the plastic steering wheel perforated the child’s food pipe and got lodged in his right chest cavity. As the symptoms were fever and the child not eating food, doctors first prescribed antibiotics, believing it to be a case of throat infection. It was only much later, after the child’s health deteriorated and his right lung almost collapsed, that a video assisted thoracoscopic surgery finally lead to the plastic part lodged in the chest! 

Pediatricians say that asphyxiation of kids on toy parts and foods is a serious, life threatening problem. More so because, in many cases, parents would not have seen the child swallowing the piece and the symptoms could be quite misleading. An article titled “Unusual foreign bodies in the respiratory tract of children” published in the journal ‘Indian Pediatrics’ (Bharat Kansal, K Mallikarjuna Swamy, Ramesh H and Basanth Kumar, 2015; 52:611-612), refers to four such cases in Davanagere, Karnataka. In the first case, the vocal cords of a 10-month-old baby had been completely obstructed by a plastic flower toy that it had swallowed and the infant was breathing only through a tiny hole in the toy! The parents had sought medical help on symptoms of hoarseness in the voice, drooling of saliva and excessive irritability! In the other three cases, the culprits were: a button with multiple holes (could be the mouth of a stuffed toy), a lion-faced sticker and a stone!

Incidents such as these should make toy manufacturers more responsible and safety conscious.