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03 August 2007

Fruit of the poisoned tree

What could possibly go wrong here?
-- GUANYAO, China -- "I'm so exhausted I could die," said a 19-year-old worker from Hunan who had spent the night attaching hair to "3,000 (Barbie) dolls" in her factory.

Her six-day working week earns her around 1,000 yuan ($132) a month, far more than she would earn at home.
China's "economic miracle" is being played out on the backs of what is virtually slave labour. The willingness to use cheap, toxic materials in childrens's toys is similarly appalling.

Funny... I don't hear Sid or Taliban Jack screaming about any of this.

Too busy going after Israel I guess.

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RELATED: We are stardust, we are golden

Do homegrown, hippie toymakers have a solution?
Four-year-old Arc plays with wooden cranes while his baby sister, Arla, teethes on a ring made of maple and cherry wood.
There's certainly a choice to be made.
The recall late Wednesday of the 967,000 individual toys manufactured in China and sold in North America since May was the second biggest this year involving toys.

The move came six weeks after RC2 Corp., maker of the popular Thomas the Tank Engine, pulled 1.5 million of its Thomas & Friends toys off shelves upon discovering that paint used to decorate them by their Chinese manufacturer contained lead.

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