Cross-nationalizing the History of Industrial Hazard

Over the summer months of 2007, Mattel Inc., the world's largest toy-maker, recalled some twenty million toys, nearly three million of them because of lead-contaminated paint. The recall mushroomed into an international event. In Germany, regulators pulled some one million toys from the shelves, in Britain and Ireland, two million; countries from Malaysia and Bahrain joined the toy returns. In just one of the incriminated Chinese factories, some eighty-three different kinds of toys may have been painted with lead pigment: Thomas the Tank engine, Dora the Explorer, Sesame Street characters of Cookie Monster, Elmo and Big Bird, as well as "Sarge" and other figures based on the Disney movie Cars. Suddenly, this toxic metal, along with carbon monoxide the world's oldest recognized industrial hazard, took the western world by surprise. Despite widespread assumptions that we were safe from its clutches, a whole new vein of lead had turned up, running into our department stores, homes, and perhaps also our children. 1 The episode graphically exposed how we in western nations now frame the hazards our industries may impose upon us. US media coverage was split between blaming and exonerating Mattel's executives but, more uniformly, construed this as a crisis for American consumers. The furore revolved almost entirely around the malfeasance of our own corporations and regulatory agencies, or around the evil and neglectful Chinese. Coverage did extend to the industrial pollution produced by China's quarter century of economic boom, but the insides of its factories were another matter. A report by a US-based group, the China Labor Watch, about the "brutal conditions" in Chinese toy factories, was released at what might seem the perfect time, a week after the lead recall story broke. But the momentary upsurge in coverage then faded, as reporters stuck to Mattel's, and their nations', efforts to monitor what Chinese factories made.