If you've been watching or reading local/world news how they are talking about the horrific find/recall in the Kids Toy 'Aqua Dot's' and how it contains a chemical that turns into the date-rape drug GHB it's horrible.
Want to know something even worse America/The World this isn't something new they just found out about. They have known about it since 2007. Why is this Toy still containg GHB being sold or even carried in the United States still?
I guess the US Government is looking at all ways of getting back some of the $$$$ already spent any way they can!
WASHINGTON — A toy company that sold popular arts-and-crafts beads that sickened about a dozen children has agreed to pay the federal government a $1.3 million fine.
It would mark the third largest toy-related penalty issued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, according to a government official who agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity ahead of the expected announcement Thursday morning.
The commission alleged that Spin Master knowingly failed to report a defect and hazard associated with Aqua Dots. It also accused the company of knowingly importing and selling a banned hazardous substance.
The toys consisted of tiny colored beads that stick together when sprayed with water, forming fun designs and shapes. About 4 million of the kits were recalled in November 2007.
Spin Master has agreed to the settlement, the official said, but denies allegations that it knowingly violated the law.
Toy contaminated with 'date rape' drug pulled
U.S. safety officials have recalled about 4.2 million Chinese-made Aqua Dots bead toys that contain a chemical that has caused some children to vomit and become comatose after swallowing them.
Scientists have found the popular toy's coating contains a chemical that, once metabolized, converts into the toxic "date rape" drug GHB, or gamma-hydroxy butyrate, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission spokesman Scott Wolfson told CNN.
"GHB is this drug that in low doses actually causes euphoria," said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent. "In higher doses, it can cause people to go into a coma. It can cause seizures. It can cause something known as hypotonia, where all your muscles just become very flaccid.
November 12, 2007
Kids love Aqua Dots, a popular craft kit which tops the Christmas list of many children. In Australia, Aqua Dots are sold under the brand name of Bindeez and, in fact, Australia named Bindeez as the country’s “Toy of the Year.” But with just a few weeks before Christmas, you will unfortunately have to tell your kids that this toy product has to be moved from their “Christmas list” and put on the “dangerous toys” list. That is because the beads (which look like candy) in Aqua Dots and Bindeez have been found to have a coating which contains a toxic chemical that turns to GHB … better known as the date rape drug … thus resulting in the most recent recall of Chinese made toys.
The Wangqi Product Factory in Shenzhen, a city just over the border from Hong Kong, made the toys that are coated with the industrial chemical 1,4-butanediol, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine said yesterday.
When ingested, the chemical metabolises into gamma hydroxy butyrate, also known as fantasy, which can cause breathing problems, loss of consciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death. But that chemical generally sells for three or four times the price of the toxic compound found on the tainted toys – 1,4-butanediol. The Bindeez were supposed to have been coated with non-toxic 1,5-pentanediol, a chemical commonly used in computer printer ink.
Following Dr. Carpenter’s research, his hospital sent out a warning to poison control centers around Australia. The next day, a mother living near the hospital brought her 10-year-old daughter to the hospital after finding her daughter first motionless and then vomiting the beads. Late last Wednesday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission ordered a recall stating that two children had fallen seriously ill after eating Aqua Dots. Since then, two children in the U.S. and another in Australia have fallen ill from the beads.Dr. Kevin Carpenter, discovered traces of GHB in the boy’s urine. After Dr. Carpenter learned that the boy had swallowed Bindeez beads and then vomited them before going into a coma, he began a four-week investigation on the toy product. In his research, he found that the beads contained an industrial chemical which breaks down in the body and becomes GHB.
GHB is a highly dangerous drug. The U.S. places GHB in the same category as heroin. When children swallow the beads which contain GHB, they can become comatose, have seizures, and develop respiratory depression, as did both children mentioned above. If you have these products in your home, you should immediately take them away from your children and contact the distributor of the product, Spin Master, which is offering a free replacement of beads (hopefully safe ones) or a toy of equal value.
US lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday that would give US authorities more tools to crack down on websites accused of piracy of movies, television shows and music and the sale of counterfeit goods.
The Stop Online Piracy Act has received bipartisan support in the House of Representatives and is the House version of a bill introduced in the Senate in May known as the Theft of Intellectual Property Act or Protect IP Act.
The legislation has received the backing of Hollywood, the music industry, theBusiness Software Alliance, the National Association of Manufacturers, theUS Chamber of Commerce and other groups.
But it has come under fire from digital rights and free speech organizations for allegedly paving the way for US law enforcement to unilaterally shut down websites, including foreign sites, without due process.
House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, said the bill "helps stop the flow of revenue to rogue websites and ensures that the profits from American innovations go to American innovators.
"Rogue websites that steal and sell American innovations have operated with impunity," Smith said in a statement.
"The online thieves who run these foreign websites are out of the reach of US law enforcement agencies and profit from selling pirated goods without any legal consequences," he said.
"It includes the most controversial parts of the Senate's Protect IP Act, but radically expands the scope," the CDT said in a statement. "Any website that features user-generated content or that enables cloud-based data storage could end up in its crosshairs.
"Internet Service Providers would face new and open-ended obligations to monitor and police user behavior," the CDT said. "Payment processors and ad networks would be required to cut off business with any website that rightsholders allege hasn't done enough to police infringement.
"The bill represents a serious threat to online innovation and to legitimate online communications tools," it said.
The Obama administration has come in for some criticism for shutting down dozens of "rogue websites" over the past year as part of a crackdown known as "Operation in Our Sites."
US authorities in November, for example, shut down 82 websites selling mostly Chinese-made counterfeit goods, including golf clubs, Walt Disney movies, handbags and other items.
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