CHICAGO - A US toy company has recalled 24,000 Chinese-made tops from 2001-2002 over concerns about lead-based paint, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.
The news came as another US company recalled Thursday 255,000 defective Chinese-made automobile tires, the latest in a slew of such cases casting a cloud over China's massive exports to the United States.
Schylling Associates, of Rowley, Massachusetts, voluntarily recalled the "Thomas & Friends" spinning tops with wooden knobs that were painted with lead-based paint, the Tribune said.
The Tribune said the recall was prompted by the paper's own tests that found that the knob on one of the toys contained 40 times the legal limit for lead, which can be toxic to children if they ingest it, for instance, by chewing on the knob.
It said the company knew about the problem five years ago and changed the knob to plastic, but did not at the time issue a recall.
Schylling chief operating officer Jim Leonard told the newspaper he did not know why a recall was not carried out at the time.
"I can't answer that. ... I had just started here," he said.
The company is also checking to see whether any of its other products had lead problems, he said.
In recent weeks US toy giant Mattel recalled nearly one million Chinese-made toys over toxic lead concerns, and RC2 Corp. recalled 1.5 million wooden "Thomas the Train" figures for the same reason.
Thursday US importer Foreign Tire Sales Inc. of Union, New Jersey, announced the recall of 255,000 Chinese-made defective automobile tires, saying they lacked a key safety feature that could be dangerous.
08/09/2007 13:57 GMT