Lead in toys.

Federal limits stop at the U.S. border. Most lead-in-toys recalls are imports, vintage finds, and hand-me-downs that predate the 2008 CPSIA limit. The toy your kid teethes on tonight may have been made before either of you were born.

Why lead is in toys at all.

Lead made paint cheaper, brighter, and more durable. It made plastic flexible. It made die-cast metal parts heavier and easier to mold. The cosmetic and structural advantages were real. So was the cost: every painted, plastic, or cast-metal toy made before the 2008 Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) is suspect, and a meaningful fraction made after 2008 — particularly imports — still test positive.

CPSIA's limit is 100 ppm in any accessible component of a children's product. That's the U.S. limit. Toys made for export to other markets, imported through grey channels, or manufactured before 2008 are not held to it. The CPSC issues a few dozen toy recalls every year and almost always identifies imports as the source.

Toys that frequently test positive.

These categories show up in independent testing year after year. Not every example contains lead — but each is common enough to be worth a 30-second check before it ends up in your kid's mouth.

• Painted wooden toys, especially imported and dollar-store finds
• Vintage Fisher-Price, Playskool, and Little Tikes from before 1990
• Die-cast metal cars and figurines (Hot Wheels, Matchbox vintage; cheap imports current)
• Painted Christmas ornaments and seasonal decorations
• Painted ride-on toys, especially tricycles and cars from the 1970s and 80s
• Plastic teethers and rattles from non-name-brand sellers
• Anything with a chrome finish — the chrome itself is fine, but painted accents under it are often leaded
• Imported "antique-style" wooden building blocks
• Costume jewelry sold in toy aisles (rings, bracelets, necklaces)
• School-supply pencils with painted erasers, especially imported

How to test a toy.

1. Pick the most-touched surface. The handle, the wheel, the painted face — wherever the kid's mouth or fingers are most likely to land.
2. Find a hidden spot on that surface. The underside, the inside of a wheel well, the back. A small mark won't show on the front of the toy.
3. For painted toys, scratch lightly first. Lead is often in the older paint layers underneath a fresh coat. A key or a coin exposes them.
4. Drop or spray FluoroSpec on the spot. One drop is enough. Don't soak.
5. Wait 30 seconds. The reagent reacts with any lead present.
6. Shine the UV light. Bright green glow = lead. No glow = no lead detected. Done.

If a toy tests positive.

Most lead-in-toy exposure happens through hand-to-mouth contact and chewing on painted surfaces — not through inhaling intact paint. The fix is straightforward: take the toy out of rotation. You don't have to throw it away. A vintage tricycle can live on a shelf as a decoration. A painted block set can be displayed instead of played with.

If your child has been chewing on a confirmed-lead toy regularly, request a blood lead test from your pediatrician. The CDC reference value is 3.5 µg/dL; anything over that triggers the action workflow. Most pediatricians will order one without resistance once you describe the exposure.

Test the toys that end up in their mouth.

The vintage rattle from grandma. The thrift-store ride-on. The dollar-store dinosaur. The hand-me-down truck. One spray, thirty seconds, and a quick UV check is all it takes.