By Steve Zalusky
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Friday, May 04, 2007

Arlington Heights resident Julie Furer said she bought vinyl-backed bibs for 3-month-old son Jensen because they stopped the drool from leaking through.

Previously, Jensen, who turns 1 today, had been using cloth bibs, but they had proved ineffective.

“I called him Waterfall. That was my nickname for him,” said Julie Furer’s mother, Mount Prospect resident Marilyn Furer. “He would be soaking wet, because he was just constantly drooling.”

Jensen would also put the bib in his mouth when he was hungry, something that came to Marilyn Furer’s attention when he started using the vinyl-backed bibs.

It caused Marilyn to think back to reports she had heard of lead being found in plastic school lunch boxes.

“So there I think, hmmm, plastic in the mouth, plastic in school lunch boxes. What the heck, I’ll just go get a (lead testing) kit just to play it safe. I never thought it would come out like that.”

Using a household lead test kit produced by Homax Products Inc., she crushed the two points on the barrel of the testing swab, shook the swab and squeezed it until a yellow liquid appeared on the tip. Then she rubbed the swab tip on the test area. To her surprise, the swab tip turned pink, indicating the presence of lead. She wound up testing 20 bibs, with eight of them yielding a positive result.

She sent the bibs, which were made in China and sold at Wal-Mart, to the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland, Calif., which had done the research on the lunch boxes.

Testing commissioned by the center revealed that one of the Baby Connection brand vinyl bibs, which were sold exclusively at Wal-Mart stores, had a lead level of 9,700 parts per million, more than 16 times greater than the legal limit for lead in paint.

The bibs were later tested in Illinois and New York, revealing similarly high levels, with the result that Wal-Mart has stopped selling the bibs in those states indefinitely. In addition, the Illinois attorney general announced a statewide recall of the Wal-Mart bibs.

“These vinyl bibs pose a lead poisoning threat to infants and toddlers who are at the most vulnerable age,” said Caroline Cox, research director at the Center for Environmental Health and author of a report on lead in baby bibs released by the center this week. “As every parent knows, young children commonly chew and suck on their bibs, so if the bib is contaminated, children are being directly exposed to lead.”

For Marilyn Furer, it wasn’t the first time her activism had produced results. When her daughter Julie, Jensen’s mom, was 18 months old, she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. In 1973, Marilyn, along with a small group of concerned parents, founded the first chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (now known as the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) in Illinois.

“She ran the whole organization as president out of our house in Mount Prospect,” Julie Furer said.

Marilyn Furer is calling for a national ban on lead-based products used by infants and children.

“As far as I’m concerned, any trace amount is unacceptable,” she said.

One should be suspicious, she said, of any product that uses plastic. “If it can’t be made without lead, it shouldn’t be made. People should use the double cloth bibs or buy wooden toys.”

Above all, she said, one should buy American and be suspicious of imports, especially from China.

Also, she said parents should get their children tested for lead.

Marilyn Furer said it is nice to hear that people are proud of her for bringing the issue to light, but is surprised it wasn’t thought of before. “I’m disappointed and disillusioned that our public, governmental agencies haven’t had in place already something that stops these kinds of things from coming on in the first place.”

NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a
prior interest in receiving this information for research and
educational purposes.