A major announcement came this week from Attorney General's Offices across the country, including ours. Toy maker Mattell reached a settlement with several different states including Missouri, agreeing to pay fines and reduce the amount of lead in their toys.

For years the acceptable standard under federal law has been 600 parts per million of lead - and that only applied to the paint. Lead prevention advocates have long insisted that no amount of lead is safe and therefore that number should be much lower. Federal law will kick in next year that lowers that standard to 90 parts per million. In the settlement with the AGs, Mattel has agreed to start complying with the 90 ppm standard immediately - that's a couple of months ahead of the federal law kicking in.

The new federal law is a significant victory. It of course will apply to all manufacturers of children's products. And besides the paint content, it for the first time regulates the lead content of the metal, plastic or whatever else might be underneath - that's known as substrate. Starting in mid-February, toy makers will have to limit lead in the substrate to 600 ppm, and get it down to 100 ppm by 2011.

Our office conducted two lead testing events for the public in 2007, and it was shocking to see the amount of lead in some of the toys people brought to us. Some new toys were in the thousands of ppm. The most memorable was an old toy tractor that had 85,000 ppm - 140 times the federal threshold.

 PS: Check out our online clearinghouse that lists recalls of toys, food, drugs and other products.