Nation in brief: Some baby bibs exceed lead limits
Some vinyl baby bibs made in China and sold at Toys “R” Us stores contain lead levels well above federal safety limits for lead in paint, a California environmental group said Wednesday.
A bib with “Winnie the Pooh” characters and store-brand bibs sold under the Koala Baby and Especially for Baby labels all tested positive for lead in concentrations three to four times what the Environmental Protection Agency allows in paint, according to the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland.
The group bought the four bibs at San Francisco Bay-area Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Stores and contracted with a private lab that specializes in product safety to perform the tests.
The Center for Environmental Health said that it had notified Toys “R” Us, the country’s second-largest toy seller, that it intended to sue if the retailer failed to take the bibs off store shelves in California, a state with especially strict rules on lead exposure.
A Toys “R” Us spokeswoman said tests performed in May by a lab contracted by the company found that the bibs met not just federal standards but California’s more stringent limits on lead content. But more bibs were being pulled from the shelves Wednesday for further testing, spokeswoman Kathleen Waugh said.
Washington
Edwards pulling staff from Nevada
Presidential hopeful John Edwards is moving staff out of Nevada to focus on other early voting states as he deals with limited resources and uncertainty about the Western state’s prominence in deciding the Democratic nomination.
The Edwards campaign said Wednesday that the Nevada staffers were being relocated to New Hampshire, South Carolina and in particular Iowa, where he is hoping a victory will propel him to the nomination. The campaign would not disclose how many staffers were being moved and neither would Edwards in a telephone interview.
Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid, the architect of Nevada’s new role in the Democratic presidential primary, responded with a warning.
“I have always said that for a Democrat to win the White House they have to win the West,” Reid said in a statement. “Any candidate who chooses to ignore Nevada and its rich diversity does so at their own peril.”
Washington
Ohio’s Pryce won’t run again
Eight-term Rep. Deborah Pryce of Ohio will not seek re-election, GOP officials said Wednesday, making her the third prominent House Republican from the Midwest to announce retirement plans in recent days.
Pryce was her party’s fourth-ranking leader before the GOP lost control in the 2006 election. She narrowly survived a challenge last fall from Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy.
Kilroy, a Franklin County commissioner, is running again in 2008, an election in which Democratic hopes run high because of voter disenchantment with President Bush and the Iraq war.