Political Quotes

“Mr. President, yesterday, in Cleveland--the largest metropolitan area and the second largest city in my State--I was part of, for want of a better term, a celebration of a public health victory for our country. I met on Halloween with Jeff Weidenhamer, chairman of Ashland University's chemistry department and a leader in consumer safety issues. That name may ring a bell with some of my colleagues because I have mentioned his work on the floor of the Senate in addressing the very real public health disaster, in some cases, afflicting our children because of lead-based paint on many imported toys, especially those imported from China. Back in the fall of 2007 and the spring of 2008, Dr. Weidenhamer identified a number of products that were highly contaminated with lead paint. As part of an Ashland University freshman chemistry class project, he sent some of his students to Dollar Stores to buy inexpensive plastic Halloween toys in the fall of 2007 and inexpensive Easter toys and ornaments in the spring of 2008. Of the 97 products he tested, 12 of them were highly contaminated with lead paint--or about one in seven. These were products such as candy buckets, drinking cups, and fake teeth. Some of those plastic teeth the children, obviously, put in their mouths. It is what they are made for, I guess. The levels of lead contamination in them were much too high. And there were other Halloween props. Many were products bought at leading national retailers.…”