Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Robin Liebal and Mike Lafon, of HDH Technical Inc. of Christiansburg, test toys for lead paint in the Toddler 2 classroom at Roanoke's Greenvale School. About 15 percent of the toys at the school were found to contain lead.

Video

• See video of Greenvale School's efforts to rid itself of toys with lead

Tips for parents

• Be cautious about cheap, painted toys and fake jewelry, and toss toys with chipped paint or deteriorating plastic.
• The biggest risk is still lead-based paint in older homes. If your house was built before 1978, check for flaking paint on baseboards and window sills.
• Encourage regular hand-washing, especially before meals.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends universal screening of children for lead exposure at ages 1 and 2.
• Children adopted from countries with less-stringent lead standards should be tested.
• Children of siblings with lead poisoning are at higher risk of lead poisoning, as are children of parents who work in manufacturing plants.

Lead-poisoning resources

• Parents should check the list of toys recalled for lead paint at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's Web site — cpsc.gov — both for toys you currently own and before buying new toys. You can also sign up to receive daily e-mail recall notices.
• Those without computer access can call the Lead Emergency Hotline at (866) 767-5323.
• The CPSC's hotline will also give advice about what to do if you think your child has been exposed to lead. Call (800) 638-2772.
• If your child has swallowed an item that might contain lead, call the Blue Ridge Poison Center at (866) 767-5323.
• For more information on the Web: leadsafe.org or cdc.gov/lead.
• Robin Liebal of the environmental consulting firm HDH Technical Inc. said concerned parents can drop off a few toys — up to five — for free testing. HDH is located at 400 W. Main St., Christiansburg.

Robin Liebal's children have graduated from toys to video games. But when the Christiansburg mother heard about recent toy recalls, she wondered what she'd do if she still had small children in the home.

Short of checking the list of toys that were recalled for lead content, how do parents ensure their kids' toys are safe?

Liebal, who co-owns an environmental consulting business, recently offered her company's $25,000 industrial-quality lead analyzer to test the toys at Greenvale School. Tests at the Northwest Roanoke day care/pre-K center showed that 15 percent of the toys -- enough to fill several garbage bags -- contained lead.

Most were plastic, made-in-China items. Some were several years old -- too old to be included on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's list of recalled toys.

"I did this because I knew if I had a small child I'd be wondering: 'Should I throw all my toys away?' " Liebal said. "And: 'How do I make sure the toys I buy in the future are safe?' "

With holiday shopping imminent, many area parents are wondering the same things. In October alone, there were 27 lead-related recalls of more than 2 million toys.

Salem mom Lisa Reinert said she spent an hour cross-checking her two children's toys against the recalled-toys list, available at cpsc.gov.

She found five of her son's Thomas the Tank Engine toys on the list and mailed them back to the manufacturer. Her brother-in-law stood in line at Wal-Mart to return several toys, she said -- but received only half the value of the toys in return.

"I belong to a moms club, and we keep each other informed about the [recall] list," Reinert said.

Area pediatricians and nurses say the phone calls about lead-tainted toys have died down in recent weeks, replaced by calls from parents worried about staph infections and seasonal viruses.

"But I expect parents are going to start calling more when they think about: 'What am I going to buy for the holidays? And how do I know it's safe?' " said Dr. Alice Ackerman, chair of pediatrics for Carilion Clinic.

Hardware stores sell lead-testing kits for the home; Lowe's offers a packet of four lead-testing swabs made by Homax for $3.95. But Consumer Reports and federal regulators say that home-testing kits are often inaccurate.

"To get an accurate reading on what is dangerous, that can only be done by using an [industrial analyzer] or sending it to a professional lab," said Scott Wolfson, CPSC's deputy director for public affairs.

Roanoke mother Christina Nifong is taking a cautious approach to Christmas shopping this year. Her kindergartner "will be getting Kapla blocks, a toy made completely out of unpainted wood."

Parents are wise to be vigilant, Ackerman said. "There's a government agency that looks into the safety of toys, but sometimes they don't catch them right away," she said. "I hate to say it, but going after the least expensive item might not always be the best ... thing in the long run because it might suggest the toy was manufactured in a way that saved money."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated that 310,000 U.S. children ages 1 to 5 have high levels of lead -- a condition that can slow brain development and lead to a host of other developmental problems.

Children should be tested for lead exposure if they are between 6 months and 6 years old, have regularly put recalled toys into their mouths or have not developed good hand-washing practices before eating, said pediatrician Versha Desai of the Carilion Pediatric Clinic. "If the child played with a recalled toy one time, it's probably nothing to worry about," she said.

Desai said she rarely sees more than one or two children a year who test positive for lead, and none because of lead-tainted toys. Her clinic routinely checks lead levels at 9 months, 2 years and before the child enters school.

Doctors are more concerned about lead poisoning from deteriorating paint in older homes. Children who live in or regularly visit a house or day care built before 1950 should be tested, and testing is also recommended if the house was built before 1978 and peeling chips of paint have been spotted in the past six months.

Both Desai and Ackerman recommend checking the Consumer Product Safety Office's Web site before any substantial purchase to see if there have been any complaints or recalls.

"There's just no substitute for parents being vigilant," Ackerman said.

Last week, Chinese regulators said they had suspended the export licenses of more than 750 toy companies because of quality control problems, and an additional 690 toy factories were ordered to improve their facilities.

But the crackdown on manufacturers likely won't affect the coming holiday season; many of those companies' toys have already been produced and shipped to America and may soon be on retailers' shelves.

Congress is considering legislation that would ban lead in children's toys and increase the maximum penalty for safety violations to $100 million. It would also require independent testing of all children's products and provide whistle-blower protections for industry employees.