We all know how serious lead poisioning is. It can cause irreversiable brain damage. Well, read the article below, so you know where I'm coming from.
WASHINGTON – Children's toys carrying the Barbie and Disney logos have turned up with high levels of lead in them, according to a California-based advocacy group — a finding that may give consumers pause as they shop for the holiday season.
The Center for Environmental Health tested about 250 children's products bought at major retailers and found lead levels that exceeded federal limits in seven of them. Lead can cause irreversible brain damage.
Among those with high lead levels: a Barbie Bike Flair Accessory Kit and a Disney Tinkerbell Water Lily necklace. The group said it also found excessive lead in a Dora the Explorer Activity Tote, two pairs of children's shoes, a boys belt and a kids' poncho.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown has sent letters to Target, Wal-Mart and the other retailers who sold the seven products, warning that children's goods on their store shelves were found to contain illegal levels of lead and should be pulled immediately.
The findings released Tuesday come about a year after a product safety law that ushered in strict limits on the amounts of lead and chemicals allowed in products made for children 12 years and younger. Congress passed the law after a slew of recalls of lead-tainted toys in 2007, including several Mattel-related recalls that involved more than 2 million toys.
Mattel said it licensed the Barbie name to Bell Sports for the bike accessory kit found with high lead, but did not make or sell it. Bell said the kit was an older product that passed safety tests in 2007, but the company didn't know it was still on store shelves.
Disney said the Tinkerbell necklace was tested by its licensee, Playmates Toys, before being distributed — and that it complied with all federal and state consumer safety regulations.
The Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, Calif., said the Barbie toy was bought at Tuesday Morning and the Tinkerbell jewelry was purchased at Walgreens. The other products the center said had high lead came from TJ Maxx, Sears, Wal-Mart and Target.
The center's executive director, Michael Green, said parents "need to know that there are still some lead problems on store shelves."
The center did an initial round of testing on products and sent the ones singled out as having high lead to an independent laboratory for additional testing and confirmation.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, which regulates toys and thousands of other products, is looking into the matter.
Commission Chairman Inez Tenenbaum held a meeting with parents and consumers Tuesday in New York to praise the new safety protections provided in the consumer law, known as CPSIA. She said lead recalls are down this year and that CPSIA should give consumers greater confidence while shopping for toys during the holiday season.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Black Friday info everyone in Indiana should know!
Special Thanks to:
The New York Times
And
Yahoo!
A year after an unruly crowd trampled a worker to death at a Wal-Mart store, the nation’s retailers are preparing for another Black Friday, the blockbuster shopping day after Thanksgiving. Along with offering $300 laptops and $99 navigation devices, stores are planning new safety measures to make sure the festive day does not take another deadly turn.
Last year, frenzied shoppers at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., trampled Jdimytai Damour, a temporary store worker who died soon afterward. To prevent any repeat, Wal-Mart has sharply changed how it intends to manage the crowds.
That new plan, developed by experts who have wrangled throngs at events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics, will affect how customers approach and enter the stores, shop, check out and exit. Each store will have its own customized plan. The hope is for an orderly Black Friday, a seemingly incongruous notion.
The most significant change at Wal-Mart is that the majority of its discount stores (as opposed to its Supercenters) will open Thanksgiving morning at 6 a.m. and stay open through Friday evening. Last year, those stores closed Thanksgiving evening and reopened early Friday morning. By keeping the stores open for 24 hours, Wal-Mart is hoping for a steady flow of shoppers instead of mammoth crowds swelling outside its stores in the wee hours of Friday.
In another new twist this year, shoppers at Wal-Mart will not have to sprint toward a pile of flat-screen televisions and scuffle with one another to get one. Rather, customers will be able to enter the store at any time and line up at merchandise displays for the must-have items on their lists. When the products go on sale Friday at 5 a.m., workers will supervise the lines, giving shoppers the merchandise in the order in which they joined the line — until the goods are out of stock.
(Only a small percentage of stores will not be open 24 hours; most Wal-Mart Supercenters are already open 24 hours.)
Another problem in the past was the bottleneck at store entrances. Like many big-box retailers, Wal-Mart does not have multiple entrances and exits to spread around customer traffic. So this year the chain will put workers in front of its stores to direct customers and keep them moving.
"We are committed to looking for ways to make our stores even safer for our customers and associates this holiday season,” said David Tovar, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, adding that the retailer was “confident our customers can look forward to a safe and enjoyable shopping experience at Wal-Mart.”
Aggressive shoppers are common the day after Thanksgiving. So crowd control plans, which vary by retailer, are critical. And they are especially important now, given the economy. Newly frugal consumers want more for less, and stores plan to drum up sales with stunning deals.
This year, for the first time, the National Retail Federation created a comprehensive set of guidelines for crowd control at stores. The guidelines note that special markdowns and historically low discounts have led to larger crowds.
“Retailers are very much trying to make themselves stand out in an environment like this,” Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for the industry group, said in a conference call this week. But she added that “retailers need to understand that many of these sales and promotional periods might draw customers who are more insistent about getting a good deal.”
The federation said retailers were performing dress rehearsals with their employees. Some stores plan to serve drinks to shoppers, or offer entertainment while they are in line, to maintain calm. Also, the stores say that creating a rapport with customers makes news of sellouts and long lines more palatable.
Indeed, Peter Conway, general manager of a Best Buy in Westbury, N.Y., has made a habit of arriving at his store at 7 p.m. Thanksgiving night to chat with shoppers lined up outside.
“I’m outside talking with my customers, just getting to know them, seeing what they’re there for,” he said. “I’m very clear with them: ‘There’s not going to be any running.’ ”
For years, Best Buy has controlled crowds by sending teams of workers into the parking lots to dole out tickets for its so-called door-busters — hot items like digital cameras and laptops at exceedingly low prices. Tickets are given out about 3 a.m. and each customer is allowed one ticket for each door-buster item they intend to buy.
“They know if they have a ticket, they’re guaranteed they have that product,” Mr. Conway said. “It creates ease of mind.”
To keep shoppers from running aimlessly around its stores, Best Buy employees hand out maps, and they mark popular items with colored balloons that can be seen from anywhere in the store.
Many retailers, including Kohl’s and Toys “R” Us, said they were not changing their crowd management plans because they had not had problems.
After the death of Mr. Damour, Wal-Mart settled a case with the district attorney of Nassau County in New York. Wal-Mart agreed to create a $400,000 compensation fund, give $1.5 million to social service programs, and offer 50 jobs to area high school students each year for three years.
Rhett Asher, the National Retail Federation’s senior asset protection adviser, said during a conference call that big box stores and mall stores had different security issues. Malls are more bustling, public places with multiple entrances — so there tend to be fewer problems. Indeed, crowd control is not as much of an issue for Macy’s as it is for big-box stores, a spokesman said, because multiple entrances serve to disperse crowds.
Still, retailers of all sorts are making preparations. In just the last month, crowds of deal-hungry shoppers have created problems. In one instance, Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic said on Twitter that he would give away copies of his NBA Live 2010 basketball video game to the first five people who showed up at a particular GameStop store. Chaos ensued. Also last month, a woman at a Burlington Coat Factory store in Ohio said she had won the lottery and would treat her fellow shoppers to new clothes. When it turned out she was lying, a riot broke out.
“No matter how seamless and airtight you think this is,” Ms. Davis said of retailers’ plans, “the unexpected can happen.”
The New York Times
And
Yahoo!
A year after an unruly crowd trampled a worker to death at a Wal-Mart store, the nation’s retailers are preparing for another Black Friday, the blockbuster shopping day after Thanksgiving. Along with offering $300 laptops and $99 navigation devices, stores are planning new safety measures to make sure the festive day does not take another deadly turn.
Last year, frenzied shoppers at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., trampled Jdimytai Damour, a temporary store worker who died soon afterward. To prevent any repeat, Wal-Mart has sharply changed how it intends to manage the crowds.
That new plan, developed by experts who have wrangled throngs at events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics, will affect how customers approach and enter the stores, shop, check out and exit. Each store will have its own customized plan. The hope is for an orderly Black Friday, a seemingly incongruous notion.
The most significant change at Wal-Mart is that the majority of its discount stores (as opposed to its Supercenters) will open Thanksgiving morning at 6 a.m. and stay open through Friday evening. Last year, those stores closed Thanksgiving evening and reopened early Friday morning. By keeping the stores open for 24 hours, Wal-Mart is hoping for a steady flow of shoppers instead of mammoth crowds swelling outside its stores in the wee hours of Friday.
In another new twist this year, shoppers at Wal-Mart will not have to sprint toward a pile of flat-screen televisions and scuffle with one another to get one. Rather, customers will be able to enter the store at any time and line up at merchandise displays for the must-have items on their lists. When the products go on sale Friday at 5 a.m., workers will supervise the lines, giving shoppers the merchandise in the order in which they joined the line — until the goods are out of stock.
(Only a small percentage of stores will not be open 24 hours; most Wal-Mart Supercenters are already open 24 hours.)
Another problem in the past was the bottleneck at store entrances. Like many big-box retailers, Wal-Mart does not have multiple entrances and exits to spread around customer traffic. So this year the chain will put workers in front of its stores to direct customers and keep them moving.
"We are committed to looking for ways to make our stores even safer for our customers and associates this holiday season,” said David Tovar, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, adding that the retailer was “confident our customers can look forward to a safe and enjoyable shopping experience at Wal-Mart.”
Aggressive shoppers are common the day after Thanksgiving. So crowd control plans, which vary by retailer, are critical. And they are especially important now, given the economy. Newly frugal consumers want more for less, and stores plan to drum up sales with stunning deals.
This year, for the first time, the National Retail Federation created a comprehensive set of guidelines for crowd control at stores. The guidelines note that special markdowns and historically low discounts have led to larger crowds.
“Retailers are very much trying to make themselves stand out in an environment like this,” Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for the industry group, said in a conference call this week. But she added that “retailers need to understand that many of these sales and promotional periods might draw customers who are more insistent about getting a good deal.”
The federation said retailers were performing dress rehearsals with their employees. Some stores plan to serve drinks to shoppers, or offer entertainment while they are in line, to maintain calm. Also, the stores say that creating a rapport with customers makes news of sellouts and long lines more palatable.
Indeed, Peter Conway, general manager of a Best Buy in Westbury, N.Y., has made a habit of arriving at his store at 7 p.m. Thanksgiving night to chat with shoppers lined up outside.
“I’m outside talking with my customers, just getting to know them, seeing what they’re there for,” he said. “I’m very clear with them: ‘There’s not going to be any running.’ ”
For years, Best Buy has controlled crowds by sending teams of workers into the parking lots to dole out tickets for its so-called door-busters — hot items like digital cameras and laptops at exceedingly low prices. Tickets are given out about 3 a.m. and each customer is allowed one ticket for each door-buster item they intend to buy.
“They know if they have a ticket, they’re guaranteed they have that product,” Mr. Conway said. “It creates ease of mind.”
To keep shoppers from running aimlessly around its stores, Best Buy employees hand out maps, and they mark popular items with colored balloons that can be seen from anywhere in the store.
Many retailers, including Kohl’s and Toys “R” Us, said they were not changing their crowd management plans because they had not had problems.
After the death of Mr. Damour, Wal-Mart settled a case with the district attorney of Nassau County in New York. Wal-Mart agreed to create a $400,000 compensation fund, give $1.5 million to social service programs, and offer 50 jobs to area high school students each year for three years.
Rhett Asher, the National Retail Federation’s senior asset protection adviser, said during a conference call that big box stores and mall stores had different security issues. Malls are more bustling, public places with multiple entrances — so there tend to be fewer problems. Indeed, crowd control is not as much of an issue for Macy’s as it is for big-box stores, a spokesman said, because multiple entrances serve to disperse crowds.
Still, retailers of all sorts are making preparations. In just the last month, crowds of deal-hungry shoppers have created problems. In one instance, Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic said on Twitter that he would give away copies of his NBA Live 2010 basketball video game to the first five people who showed up at a particular GameStop store. Chaos ensued. Also last month, a woman at a Burlington Coat Factory store in Ohio said she had won the lottery and would treat her fellow shoppers to new clothes. When it turned out she was lying, a riot broke out.
“No matter how seamless and airtight you think this is,” Ms. Davis said of retailers’ plans, “the unexpected can happen.”
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
testing
i had testing for taekwondo today
it went pretty fast && it was fun
im going from roccemended greenbelt to the regular green belt(pic above)
the regular green belt has a black stripe down the middle, i just couldent find a pic D:
well thts all i felt like saying..
bye :D
Saturday, August 15, 2009
advice column
alright so im coming out a new advice column about anything u wanna ask! but if its anything suicidal u mite wanna get a pro to help. ask ur questions at bamscat11@gmail.com or bamscat11@yahoo.com i wanna help u! once u email ur question to my account ill read it over and publish ur question and my answer on my blog. fair enough? if ya got some friends who need advice, give them my address! if its anything beyond suicide ill just reply to ur case with a few hotlines tht u should try and call for help, i dont specialize in tht catagory. alright well i think i covered it all. please note: i mite take a while to get back to u because i am only ONE person! so if i dont get to ur email within 5 weeks somethins up or my internet has crashed and need a pro to fix it. in ur email include ur first & last name or u can remain anonmous and ill bleep out ur name. include ur age and state [not city] and please no spam! okay well anyway thts about it. goodbye!
deer meat [lol]
a husband went out to go shoot dinner for the nite. he came back home and brought in a huge buck. the wife asks "should we tell the kids wht kind of meat is on their plates?" the husband replied "dont worry honey, ive got this all covered." later at dinner the kids were itching to know wht they were gonna eat. the husband dropped a hint "its wht my wife calls me sometimes" the little girl shouted to the boy "dont eat it, its an asshole!"
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