Cost of poisoning our kids with cheap stuff: $6 billion. Let's pay for safer kids' products rather than treating illness caused by cheap toxic crap

The Ann Arbor Based Ecology Center, using a formula from the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, has put a price tag on the cost of childhood illnesses attributable to environmental toxics in Michigan. It's just under $6 billion, or about 1.5 percent of the state's annual gross domestic product. If you want the short version and not the PDF file, and aren't reading this months after it was posted, the the Michigan Network for Children's Environmental Health site has it on the front page.

This will be useful data the next time legislators doing the bidding of industry lobbyists tie up bills that would allow parents to know what's in their kids' toys or stop the use of dangerous chemicals on kids' scalps or phase out toxic flame retardants in favor of safer alternatives.

Of course, opponents will cry that it will cost consumers more money (at the cash register) to make products that are safer for children. Which is a damn sight better than making consumers pay (through health insurance premiums) to care for kids made sick by their cheap, crappy, toxic products.

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