Product Safety

The importer of a Valentine's Day lollipop said it was voluntarily recalling the treats after metal fragments were found in at least two lollipops sold at central Florida stores. Sherwood Brands of Maryland, which imports the candy from China, said it was recalling all of its Pokemon Valentine Cards and Pops, which have been pulled from the shelves of thousands of stores across the country. About 20 lollipops were seized at Kathleen Elementary School in Lakeland.

After facing recall after recall of millions of Chinese-made items, the nation's biggest toy sellers are imposing stricter measures on their suppliers -- including tougher standards for lead content -- to get ahead of expected new federal legislation. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Toys R Us Inc., the nation's top two toy sellers, are setting a much tighter standard for the amount of lead allowed on surface paint for toys shipped to their chains starting March 1.

U.S. health officials evaluated the wrong factory when assessing the safety of a Chinese-made drug ingredient that may be a source of problems with a blood thinner, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday. Baxter International Inc.'s heparin has been linked to four deaths and hundreds of reports of allergic reactions. An investigation will take FDA inspectors to China this week.

The U.S. Toy Industry Assn., whose members include Mattel Inc. and Hasbro Inc., said Monday that its board unanimously approved a plan for a new testing system after the recall of tens of millions of Chinese-made toys last year. The proposal includes more-stringent procedures for analyzing safety during the design and manufacturing of toys, as well as the testing of finished products, said Joan Lawrence, a vice president of the group.

Li Li, a drug industry veteran, spent almost five years getting his heparin plant ready for U.S. regulatory approval. It was an arduous process, he said, displaying thick black binders with detailed documentation of his operations here. And his timing couldn't have been better. Heparin, a widely used blood thinner, was once made from cow lungs. Drug makers shifted to pig intestines as concerns over mad cow disease heightened in the 1990s, and no place has more hogs than China.

After a year of toy recalls that shook public confidence in product safety, Senate Democrats and influential industry groups are facing off over how the government regulates everything from baby cribs to all-terrain vehicles. Backed by consumer advocates, lawmakers are pushing to give the public broad access to information about potentially dangerous products and to increase penalties for companies that make or sell harmful products.

Moving to reverse decades of limited federal oversight, the Senate voted Thursday to make sweeping changes to the government's system of regulating toys, appliances and thousands of other household products. The 79-13 vote could lead to a major expansion of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and stiffer penalties for companies that manufacture or distribute hazardous products.

There's no sign of an economic slowdown at Larry Mestyanek's toy factory in Compton. Whirring machines cut letters from the alphabet out of red, blue and yellow slabs of wood, making long rows of the letter E. Across the room, men with air filter masks sand toddler's chairs that are lined up in rows as if expecting a convention of miniature leaders. The machines are so loud it's hard to hear the rows of tiny wooden music boxes playing a disjointed lullaby.

Two U.S. lawmakers urged safety regulators to do more to prevent kitchen ranges from tipping over. At least 33 people have been killed since 1980 by free-standing stoves tipping over on them, Reps. John D. Dingell and Bart Stupak, both Michigan Democrats, said in a letter to Nancy Nord, the Consumer Product Safety Commission's acting chairwoman.

By the standards of Chinese corruption cases, the $832,000 that the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration was charged with skimming over a seven-year period was not huge. But the death sentence given in the bribery case Tuesday reflected the growing pressure under which Beijing finds itself in the wake of medical and food scandals that have rattled the nation and spread anxiety abroad.