McDonald's, Cadmium, and Thermo Electron Niton Guns

An anonymous reader writes, snipping from a story at NPR: "'How did the Consumer Products Safety Commission find out that cadmium, a toxic metal, was present on millions of Shrek drinking glasses now being recalled by McDonald's? Well, an anonymous person with access to some pretty slick testing equipment tipped off Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) about the problem. Her office confirmed that somebody using a Thermo Electron Niton XRF testing gun found a lot of cadmium, sometimes used in yellow pigments, on the surface of the glasses. The source overnighted glasses to Speier's office last week, which then turned over the test results and specimens to the CPSC. ... By law, no more than 75 parts per million of cadmium is supposed to be present in paint on kids toys. Speier's office said the amount found on the glasses was quite a bit higher than that.' Seems like the answer to a previous question about at-home science — this blogger seems to have been one of the anonymous sources."

Comments

Home Labs?

[MagusSlurpy]

This isn't an argument supporting the validity of "home labs." Those handheld XRFs are about $30K. I'd love to have one in MY home lab, where the most expensive equipment is a $300 distillation kit that I had to save for six months to justify.

Re:I'm betting

[Anonymous Coward]

Company located there does not mean product made there. Have you not been paying attention for the last forty years?

Re:How did the US government miss this?

[hondo77]

You're right. We should expect the government to test every product made for children for sale in this country...for all known toxins...before they go on sale. Of course if it did then you'd complain about the Obama nanny state stealing your money with excessive income tax.

What color is the sky in your world?

Re:I'm betting

[TubeSteak]

The glasses were made in China.

I'm betting you're wrong.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100604/ap_on_he_me/us_cadmium_shrek

All the recalled jewelry was made in China. The drinking glasses are the first American-made products to be recalled.

[U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission spokesman] Wolfson said the recalled glasses have "far less cadmium" than the recalled jewelry. He would not say how much cadmium leached from the glasses in tests, only that it was "slightly above the protective level currently being developed by the agency."

Arc is a French company with a plant in New Jersey ; its origins as a glassmaker date to 1825. The company said that it has been making glasses for McDonald's for 15 years and that levels of cadmium used in the enamel baked into the glass were within current federal safety guidelines.

Biagi, Arc's vice president of North American sales, said the company was surprised and confused when it got word of the recall Thursday night.

I'm not sure why the product is being recalled based on CPSC standards that don't actually exist yet.
I'm guessing it's because a Congresswoman got involved and everyone went into cover-your-ass mode.

Re:I'm betting

[X0563511]

We don't know where all the components come from though. Perhaps the sand/whatever itself was contaminated, or one of the other additives. Or someone was just a dumbass and put cadmium in it for some reason.

How far down the rabbit hole do you go though? That's the harder question to answer.

T1 supplier: it's raw material, use it for whatever.
T2 supplier: it's been processed somewhat. don't use it for foodstuffs etc.
T3 supplier: here's this stuff we found cheap.
T4 supplier: here's this stuff mixed with other stuff we found sorta cheap.
T5 supplier: here's this glass-making stuff.
Cup-maker: wtf, cadmium?
-or-
Cup-maker: herp-derp lets toss some cadmium in there

Sure. the blame may be at the end of the chain, but it might not either. It could be anywhere along the line. Somewhere, someone made a mistake... but was it an honest one?