SpongeBob SquarePants Journals and Address Books Recalled

US problems with Chinese exports continued this week as an Ohio based company recalls a line of SpongeBob SquarePants journals and address books. This on top of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer finding the contaminate melamine in two lines of chicken jerky dog treats it had shipped to its stores. The SpongeBob SquarePants recall occurred after executives at Martin Designs performed internal testing and found a higher level of lead paint than is considered safe according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission's guidelines.

Over the last six months, a continual stream of recalls has occurred by US stores and companies after receiving imports from Chinese manufacturers and producers. While the products cleared the inspections that take place at the shipping channels and product safety organizations in Asia, the policies here and the practices followed by companies have magnified an already growing problem. That problem being that China is currently unable to police the production and manufacturing of products to be exported to countries like the US.

In the latest example, Martin Designs conducted a recent testing of the SpongeBob SquarePants line of journals and address books. A popular cartoon figure, SpongeBob SquarePants along with Elmo and The Backyardigans is one of the most popular toy lines on the market today. The bindings that were tested revealed a lead paint level that exceeded the .06 standard set by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In response to the findings, Martin Designs recalled over 250,000 journals and address books. According to safety guidelines, any product that tests higher than the .06 standard is automatically recalled without question.

While Martin Designs states that no one has been harmed by the lead paint, studies have revealed that the metal agent can cause significant damage to the brain and its functionality. The journals and address books have a black spiral binding and various design covers on them. Sold from the summer of 2006 to present, stores nationwide have carried the assortment of SpongeBob items. The recalled address books' UPC code, printed on the back cover, is 80773007505; the recalled journals have the UPC codes 80773002260, 80773075501 and 80773007551.

The SpongeBob SquarePants recall comes less than one week after Mattel recalls over one million toys and accessories that their tests showed excessive levels of lead paint in them. Of that total, almost 500,000 were die cast cars whose paint and trim had unsafe amounts of lead paint. This lead paint issue has been the bedrock of a continued downward spiral of consumer confidence in products, not just toys, manufactured in China. Beginning with a recall of dog treats that had heightened levels of melamine that were found in several pet food chains and killed an untold number of dogs, Chinese made products have been under intense scrutiny and failed horribly in testing.

Beyond the toys and dog treats, lead paint, salmonella, and melamine contaminants have been found in fish and toothpaste, as well as other products that have undergone testing by the Consumer Product Safety Commission or the Food and Drug Administration. These problems also raise the concern people will have for food made in Beijing during next summer's Olympic Games. While Olympic Committee members have made promises that all food will be safe and absent of any additives, the fact that China is already unable to manage their existing infrastructure does not bode well for a nation that will be influxed with international visitors for two weeks during the summer of 2008.

Now that Martin Designs has made the recall and asked owners of the address books and journals to destroy them and send the UPC marker to its offices for a full refund, the question that some are asking is what will be next. If a SpongeBob SquarePants journal cannot be trusted, what can?