Damaging softeners! PVC is made softer and more flexible by the addition of ‘softeners’. These are not chemically bound to PVC and float around, ready to be ingested by chewing children. Softeners or phthalaltes are known to cause damage to the kidney, liver and sex organs. Testing has shown that some children's teething and other toys contain up to 40 per cent phthalates!

Lethal lead, toxic cadmium
The story doesn’t end here. There are more ways in which a toy can slowly kill you. It has also been found that toys have dangerous levels of lead and cadmium in them. And get this: You don’t have to chew on the toy for them to harm you. Lick it. Suck it. Or even inhale it, the damage is done. Lead leads to the damage of the nervous system and brain. Cadmium on the other hand may even cause cancer.

Ban PVC! While India has not even bothered to look into the problem, Belgium, Italy, the Philippines, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, and Spain have either proposed bans for PVC toys, urged toy manufacturers to stop manufacturing them, or recommended that retailers withdraw them from stores. Since the summer of 1996, Greenpeace has asked toy manufacturers to reveal the ingredients in children's toys. With few exceptions, the toy industry has refused to disclose this information. Lego, IKEA and Nike have pledged to make all of their products PVC-free. Mattel, Hasbro, Disney are yet to do so. A move by the European Union to impose a temporary ban was scuttled by the powerful American toys lobby, which has also prevented their own government from doing anything concrete.

Non-toxic Alert! Indian toys high on toxins. In 1982, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, declared di-ethyl hexyl phthalate (DEHP), the most commonly used plasticizer in toys, a "probable carcinogen" as a result of which it was voluntarily withdrawn by many toy manufacturers selling products in the US. In Switzerland, its use has been banned in toys designed for children under three. In 1996 Greenpeace began an investigation into soft PVC toys. A total of 71 toys were purchased and analysed from 17 countries.Two of the toys purchased from India contained a toxic chemical di ethyl hexyl phthalate (DEHP) which was amongst the highest in all toys sampled.
(Source: www.toxicslink.org)

Traditional toys

Etikoppaka and Kondapalli in Andhra Pradesh and Channapatna in Karnataka are some of the places which are famous for wooden toys. In some of these, vegetable dyes are used in coloring instead of lead based dyes. In Nirmal, a tribal town of Adilabad, toys are made with a herbal extract and are usually models of animals, fruits and human occupations. The tradition has been in existence for at least 500 years, from the reign of the Vijayanagar kings. The dolls were displayed on the kolupadis or steps made of wood and covered with a thick cloth. The dolls were mostly mud icons of various gods and goddesses painted in bright colours. Some families displayed dolls made of rosewood, sandalwood and ivory.