"It started with Jarnell Brown, a 4-year-old Minneapolis boy who died two years ago after swallowing a heart-shaped charm made almost entirely of lead. Then came last year's 'summer of recalls.' By December, government regulators in near crisis mode had recalled almost 30 million toys, many of them because of lead. And the problem keeps flaring up. Last week, U.S. officials recalled 84,000 children's storage bins from Taiwan because the surface paint has high levels of lead. Now Congress is poised to make the first major overhaul of consumer product safety laws in a generation -- including a virtual ban on lead in toys, something never tried before. One of the key players in the coming weeks' negotiations will be Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who was a Senate candidate when Brown died. She has made toy safety the signature issue of her first year in Washington, introducing the lead ban and other measures that make it easier to identify hazardous products."
